Twombly Roses

Walking to the studio on 4th August 2023 I was thinking about a book I just got by Dean Rader, Before the Borderless:Dialogues with the art of Cy Twombly, in which the poet enters a dialogue with his deceased father around the paintings of Twombly. I found I was drawn particularly to the six paintings he made for the Museum Brandhorst “Untitled(Roses)”.

Twombly uses, as is is wont, snatches of poetry, Dickinson, Rilke, Eliot and Bachmann, within the images providing a ‘small cultural history of the rose’ as the museum website has it. It is difficult not to see the presentation as corporate and barely felt, which might be unfair, as they’re simultaneously grand and loose. Decide for yourself.

Curiously the roses do not feature at all in Rader’s poetry or as illustrations in the book.

These images were made because I wanted some coulour in the studio and if it’s in the studio I have to make it. There are three versions of each image, they were originally made with poster paints and chalk pastel on loose paper on the 4th, they were then stretched and worked on further on the 7th August after which they were sttretched to board face down to get the stretch marks out and uncovered on the 9th and the 11th. Some may have been worked on after that. The drawings are part of the blog post I made on the 12th August. [LINK]