“In the same way in which Twombly assembled the most disparate objects to create his sculptures, Pierre Henry, pioneer of musique concrète and electronic music, manipulated and remodeled audio material - “sound objects” – to produce his compositions. In 1953, as Nicola Del Roscio has written, Twombly was struck by a concert of Henry’s Le Voile d’Orphée (1953) that he heard on the radio, and years later he drew inspiration from it for the paintings Treatise on the Veil (1968) and Treatise on the Veil (Second Version) (1970).
Le Voile d’Orphée opens with the manipulated sound of a piece of cloth being ripped, a sound that serves to symbolize the dramatic death of Orpheus, whose body is torn to pieces by bacchants. The sound expands as if suspended in a time without end, which Twombly conveys in his Treatise on the Veil paintings through a series of continuous lines, parts of broken lines, and numerical inscriptions. Traced in wax crayon on a dark ground, the lines run along the lower part of the two paintings, as if to measure the space of the canvas and beat out the rhythm of an inner tempo, calling to mind the scores of postwar avant-garde music.”
Excerpt from the text “Cy Twombly. Imperfect Paradise” by Eleonora Di Erasmo. In Un/veiled. Cy Twombly, Music, Inspirations. Rome: Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, 2022.
