 |
| Cy Twombly, Veil of Orpheus, 1968 |
Gagosian’s exhibition of a selection of Cy Twombly’s works on
paper and canvas that focus on the figure of Orpheus is difficult to write
about. It’s difficult because the works evoke a sense of mystery and awe in the
visitor that doesn’t adequately translate into words. These paintings are about
space and silence, about the fullness of white, and cream, and the places on
the canvas where paint or markings don’t appear. In them we see thinking and painting come
together, to create space, to create a canvas or an image that is no more than
space and colour rethought. We might be tempted to assert that the void of
death—or maybe separation—as it is told by the myth of Orpheus is everywhere
here, not in the markings on the background, but in the white, cream and
off-colour background as foreground, as the substance and meaning of the image.
And then I am reminded that to isolate
meaning is not the point of Twombly’s paintings.
 |
| Cy Twombly, Orpheus, 1979 |
The colour of the ground is like a stain on the canvas, so
subtle it could even be mistaken for the dye of aging. Off- white weeps over
this canvas, tears falling across the face of the stone-like surface. Again and
again, the moment on a painted canvas that appears to be when Twombly changed
his mind, and he painted over the blue, or the green, or the red, with white,
creates density, texture, history and intrigue in the image. And through these
apparent changes of mind we suspect a layering of stories, of time, of space,
coming together on every level of the canvas. Then again, the most significant
moment of all, that which becomes the pivot around which everything turns is what
might be a mistake or a smudge, made by the left over paint on the artist’s
hand as he brushes it across the image. History would then be an accident. And
then there are the paper images on which Twombly has written in pencil, words,
like “NONSTOP,” “set time” or perhaps it is something else, I cannot read. A
line is drawn, its measurements taken, though we know from Twombly’s other very
famous Treatise on the Veil
paintings, that measurements mean nothing, there is no scientific understanding
of anything in these images.
 |
| Cy Twombly, Orpheus, 1968 detail |
Orpheus, the mythical archetype representing the artist and the
creative process, must be important for his name is the title or the cycle. The
cycle of paintings is, we suppose, a portrait of Orpheus, though there is
nothing that represents his story in the substance of the image. We see an “O,”
sometimes completed and at others still open, and we can discern the name
spelled out sometimes, but that’s as far as it goes.
 |
| Cy Twombly, Orpheus, Installation View Works on Paper @ Gagosian, Paris |
The works on paper are exquisite; little drops of paint,
their oily constitution staining the paper in a way that looks random, but we
know from a familiarity with Twombly’s oeuvre must be extremely precise. A red,
uneven letter “E” floats above the drops of paint, separated from its friend, a
few soft red lines, falling faintly across the bottom of the picture. On
another work on paper, a brown line that might once have been an arrow has been
erased, and then reinscribed, on top of the layers of lines that didn’t get
resurrected. Orpheus is written above it as if in another change of mind, a
decision to name him afterall.
 |
Orpheus, Installation View @ Gagosian, Paris
|
Rilke must also be important because his 55 sonnets devoted
to Orpheus were the apparent inspiration for Twombly’s cycle. And the same myth
inspired the French composer Pierre Henry’s The
Veil of Orpheus. The music represents the tearing of the veil, in turn a
representation of Orpheus’ loss of Eurydice. The tearing of the cloth is so easily
transposed by our minds looking for meaning, for something to hold onto, even
when it isn’t there. We see the torn veil in the form of Twombly, the artist’s
presence on the surface of the canvas in the working and reworking of the paint.
The line that falls, more deliberate than the tears, must be from Rilke. But it
is not; Twombly might be inspired by Rilke, but he would never translate his
poetry.
 |
| Cy Twombly, Orpheus, 1968 detail |
Twombly’s cycle of paintings is also about landscape. This is
a recent revelation, had only when I saw the paintings in the retrospective at the
Pompidou. The quietness, the everyday, the infinity of the vision, the
ephemerality and the ethereality of the colour and representation are qualities
that can really only ever be found in nature. The delicacy of touch that is the
brush or the pencil of Cy Twombly must surely speak to the mystery of nature. The
colour on the canvas can be so delicate that when in search of a resemblance, only
air could come close. There is nothing man made about them. And I want to
connect them back to that mysterious Virginia landscape that was all around
him, that surrounded his life in the American South as it is so spectacularly
captured in the photographs of his friend Sally Mann. Ultimately, though, I don’t
know how to interpret the lines, or the joins in the canvas, or even the ground
that interrupts and interferes with their trajectory. Maybe they are the tears
again, the colour of a painting as it weeps for its unending unknown journey?
All Images Copyright Twombly Foundation
