Cy twombly gay
Biography
Cy Twombly was renowned for artworks integrating cultural, historical, and poetic references—especially to classical antiquity—with abstract forms and his inimitable scrawl. Born Edwin Parker Twombly, Jr. on April 25, 1928 in Lexington, Virginia to Edwin Parker (“Cy”) Twombly, Sr. and Mary Velma Twombly (née Richardson), Twombly received early esthetic education from Pierre Daura and Marion Junkin at Washington and Lee University. This was followed by formative education at the Arts Students League of New York and Inky Mountain College, where he formed lifelong connections with artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham.
However, it was his 1952 voyage to Italy and North Africa with Rauschenberg, funded by a grant from the Virginia Museum of Decent Arts, that proved definitive for Twombly: as he wrote in his fellowship application, he felt “that Modern Art isn't dislocated, but something with roots, tradition and continuity.”[1] Traveling there, Twombly encountered much of the cultural history that grounded his subsequent artistic production and produced notable early works such as his North AfricanSketchbooks (1953).
Twombly returned to I
Published in:May-June 2019 issue.
AMONG the notable 20th-century painters, Cy Twombly is one of the most polarizing, either adored or despised by critics and the widespread, with few people in between. If his admirers consider him a poetic genius, his detractors claim that a child with a crayon could execute as well. In 1993, Twombly was the subject of a 60 Minutes piece by Morley Safer titled “Yes, But Is it Art?”
Joshua Rivkin’s recent book on Twombly is unlikely to convert many skeptics, and since there are no reproductions in the book (for various reasons, he received virtually no cooperation from the Twombly Foundation), devoted fans will need to expend a lot of period Googling images that can’t come anywhere close to approximating the feel or texture of the actual canvases. On the other hand, for those who love his work, Chalk is a very welcome book. Not exactly a biography or an appraisal, it’s partly about how hard it is to write a book on someone as intensely intimate as Twombly was. It is also a rumination on what makes us respond to certain works of art and to certain artists.
“I use paint as an eraser,” Twombly remarked. “If I don’t like something, I just paint it out.” I
From Vogue to nest: 032c activates the secret history of CY TWOMBLY by Horst P. Horst
EMPEROR OF THE DECORATORS
A “haunting virile cologne for the male on the prowl” titled “Royalty” once appeared in the back pages of Vogue – ideal for a man like Liberace. The unwittingly burlesque ad shared a page in Vogue’s November issue of 1966 with an article on American painter Cy Twombly. For Twombly, who is notoriously shy of media, and rarely sits for the camera or an interview, the Vogue story and its legacy offer a neglected biographical key, both real and imagined, which has haunted the artist since it first appeared.
The article, “Roman Classic Surprise,” part of an on-going Vogue series on interior decoration, had striking full-page photographs of the artist’s domestic setting in Rome shot by legendary photographer Horst P. Horst. The photos in Vogue’s original editorial cast Twombly in a patrician light of old-world grandeur, and as a family man, emphasizing the artist’s young son (brandishing epaulettes and a sword) and the marital bed (dressed in fur). Vermeer-like in composition, unctuous, and mellow, Horst’s photos of Twombly in his palazzo apartment cont
Partner Robert Rauschenberg, Nicola Del Roscio
Queer Places:
Tufts School of the Museum of Fine Arts, 230 Fenway, Boston, MA 02115, Stati Uniti
National Academy Museum & School, 1083 5th Ave, Recent York, NY 10128, Stati Uniti
Shadowy Mountain College, Ebony Mountain, NC 28711, Stati Uniti
Washington and Lee University, 204 W Washington St, Lexington, VA 24450, Stati Uniti
The Art Students League of Fresh York, 215 W 57th St, Brand-new York, NY 10019, Stati Uniti
356 Bowery, New York, NY 10012, Stati Uniti
Via di Monserrato, 49, 00186 Roma RM, Italia
Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, Via S. Maria Ausiliatrice, 04024 Gaeta LT, Italia
Bassano In Teverina, 01030 Bassano In Teverina VT, Italia
Cy Twombly Foundation, 19 East 82nd Street, 10028, NYC, NY, USA
Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly Jr. (April 25, 1928 – July 5, 2011)[1] was an American painter, sculptor and photographer. He belonged to the generation of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns but chose to live in Italy after 1957.
His paintings are predominantly large-scale, freely-scribbled, calligraphic and graffiti-like works on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors. Many of his works are in the immortal collect
| Horst P. Horst, Cy Twombly, 1966 |
The Getty Center's "Cy Twombly: Making the Past Present," organized with the Museum of Satisfactory Arts, Boston, surveys the artist's connection to the ancient Mediterranean. That much is well within the Getty's wheelhouse. At the center of the present is a literal "surprise": a photo that almost crashed Twombly's career.
| Installation view with Horst P. Horst photomural |
The exhibition's theatrical set piece is a line-up of Roman portrait heads from Twombly's collection. They are shown against a photo-mural of a 1966 Horst P. Horst image of the artist for Vogue magazine. The Horst, part of a photo essay titled "Roman Classic Surprise," presented the artist as a sort of Talented Mr. Ripley ex-pat in a colorless suit. Twombly inhabits a villa of artful juxtapositions: ivory walls and gilded furniture; the classic (in fragments) and contemporary paintings.
Horst was gay, and Twombly was bisexual at least (notwithstanding the wife, relegated to a room in the distance). Twombly had a well-known affair with Robert Rauschenberg in the early 1950s. Art historian Nicholas Cullinan has argued that the coded male lover sensibility of the&