Reading Cy Twombly Poetry in Paint [Hardcover]

Many of Cy Twombly's paintings and drawings include handwritten words and phrasesnaming or quoting poets ranging from Sappho, Homer, and Virgil to Mallarm?, Rilke, and Cavafy. Enigmatic and sometimes hard to decipher, these inscriptions are a distinctive feature of his work.Reading Cy Twomblyposes both literary and art historical questions. How does poetic reference in largely abstract works affect their interpretation?

Reading Cy Twomblyis the first book to focus specifically on the artists use of poetry. Twomblys library formed an extension of his studio and he sometimes painted with a book open in front of him. Drawing on original research in an archive that includes his paint-stained and annotated books, Mary Jacobuss accountrichly illustrated with more than 125 color and black-and-white imagesunlocks an important aspect of Twomblys practice.

Jacobus shows that poetry was an indispensable source of reference throughout Twomblys career; as he said, he never really separated painting and literature. Among much else, she explores the influence of Ezra Pound and Charles Olson; Twomblys fondness for Greek pastoral poetry and VirgilsEclogues; the inspiration of theIliadand OvidsMetamorphoses; and Twomblys love of Keats and his collaboration with Octavio Paz.

Twomblys art reveals both his distinctive relationship to poetry and his use of quotation to solve formal problems. A modern painter, he belongs in a critical tradition that goes back, by way of Roland Barthes, to Baudelaire.Reading Cy Twomblyopens up fascinating new readings of some of the most important paintings and drawings of the twentieth century.