The Ceiling
by Kelly Presutti | 6 May 2010 | Contemporary, Museums
Cy Twombly, The Ceiling, 2007-2009
A few people have already commented on Cy Twombly’s recently unveiled ceiling for the Louvre (here and here) – including one technically detailed letter that reveals a significant part of it was painted by a professor of art history!
Last night art historians Alex Potts (who has a forthcoming book on post-war art) and Richard Leeman (author of a monograph on Twombly and the Louvre publication on the ceiling) gave their thoughts. Potts insisted that the work – a vast expanse of painterly blue with hovering medallions and white bands containing the names of seven Greek sculptors from antiquity – is an “intelligent departure” from Twombly’s typical style, praising him for not simply enlarging his work to fit the space (as he hinted other artists creating large-scale public works were wont to do). He specifically noted the loss of texture and the unusual clarity of the writing as “honest responses to the demand” to create a work of such magnitude and prominence.
Leeman, however, pointed out several crucial points of congruence with Twombly’s earlier works, most notably the instability and uncertainty proper names carry – especially proper names as grand and mythic as those of the Greek sculptors; the presence of a father-son relationship between Praxiteles and Cephisodotus, the supposed name of both his father and his son; and the collage-like style, extending so far as to see an echo of scotch tape in the rectangular white bands, recalling Twombly’s important but little-known collage works.
Twombly himself, the first artist since Georges Braque to be invited to decorate a ceiling in the Louvre, remains laconic in his commentary,
I was just thinking of the blue with the disks on it, it’s totally abstract … I put all the great Greek sculptors’ names on the top. It’s that simple. [AP via USAToday]
I wonder if Daniel Buren would be an example of one who “simply enlarges.” (1)
Looking through the exhibition catalog for Twombly’s Vienna exhibition, “States of Mind” recently, I was struck by how much of the varied work was permeated with moods of luxury, decadence, and aestheticism. One would never have imagined this range, if one knew only of the early works that are usually found in textbooks. I think this later material is actually more engaging and durable.
(1) https://studio360.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/can-art-and-football-mix/
I was surprised to see something so rich from Twombly as well – the blue is really ravishing (in the letter I linked to, the studio assistants joke, probably after International Klein Blue, that it should be called “Twomblu”).
It was also good to learn about his collages – and disappointing that there are apparently none in the Vienna show? The interest in collage along with the recognition of the crucial role scale plays seem to me to both be essential, under-examined factors in understanding even his more familiar works – something about the limits of the scope of illegibility and the layering of registers of form and meaning becomes more apparent.
This was a very timely post for me! This week I hav been researching more information about Twombly’s ceiling to show to my contemporary art students. Thanks for the latest up-to-date discourse on the topic. I especially love your link about Barbara Crawford, the art historian who helped Twombly paint.