Tag Archives: Cy Twombley

Cy Twombly’s Sculptures (Cont.), at MoMA

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Installation View

Continuing from the small exhibition of Twombly sculptures at the Art Insitute, MoMA has dedicated a small space to showing the late artist’s sculptures as well, which (joy!) I saw over the weekend. Perhaps simply in relief to the garishly colorful, incredibly large deKooning exhibition, looking at these seven white constructions felt like an oasis of calm.

Untitled (Jupiter Island), 1992. Wood, plaster, plastic leaves, wire, cloth, sand, and paint.

I’m not sure how clear it is in these photos, but the white stood out beautifully from the blue night outside the window. The roughness of the bottom contrasts with the smooth vertical white shape with its unexpected dip at the top.

Untitled (Funerary Box for a Lime Green Python). 1954. Wood, palm leaf fans, house paint, cloth, and wire.

The delicacy of the fans make this my favorite of these works. It’s the earliest sculpture shown, and the fanciful description he gives the title disappears in most of his later works.

Untitled (Lexington), 2005. Plaster, paint, wood, cardboard, metal, paper, cloth, twine, and pencil

Although I say they are white, in his later works Twombly began adding a dash of bright color. Here the very tip is a bright pink. I love the balancing act implied by the varying degrees of narrowness of the different objects.

Untitled (Lexington) from a different angle.

Cy Twombly: Sculpture at the Chicago Museum of Art

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I tend to think of Cy Twombly more as a painter than a sculptor, although the artist has created sculptures throughout his career, as can be seen in this intimate exhibition at the Art Institute. Twombly’s sculptures tend to be composed of everyday found objects, put on a pedestal, and unified by a coat of white paint. This formalizes the objects as works of art, and gives them a timeless feel that is ethereal even while it is rough and tough. While the spare constructions are evocative of archaic relics, the presentation is absolutely modern. Their names of times and places suggest journal entries, sculptures of memories.

Untitled, Bassano in Teverina, 1989
Wood, plaster, nails, traces of red and blue paint, glue, and white paint

Untitled, New York, 1955
Wood, cloth, nails, and house paint

Untitled, Lexington, 1948
Wood, porcelain and metal knobs, cloth, and house paint

Three of the Greatest Painters of the Past 150 Years?

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Now this is an exhibition I can get behind: Turner, Monet, Twombly: Later Paintings at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm promises to be a brilliant and insightful exhibition. I heard the title, and I immediately got it: the loose brushwork and rich colors that developed over their long careers can seem remarkably similar despite the very different times and places in which they worked.

 Twombly’s 2008 Lepanto versue Monet’s 1914 Waterlillies:

“J. M. W. Turner, Claude Monet and Cy Twombly are three of the greatest painters of the last 150 years. This groundbreaking exhibition focuses on their later work, examining not only the art historical links and affinities between them but also the common characteristics of and motivations underlying their late style.” – More on the background to the exhibition here.

 Monet’s Japanese Bridge (1918-1924) and Turner’s Sunset:

I would love to see how they flesh it out–in the flesh, so to speak. Anyone want to plan a trip to Stockholm this October?