Cy Twombly

Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
Private Collection, New York
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, Contemporary Art, 18 November 1999, Lot 263
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

New York, Leo Castelli Gallery, Cy Twombly - Watercolours, 1976

Yvon Lambert, Catalogue Raisonné des Oeuvres sur Papier de Cy Twombly, Vol. VI, 1973-1976, Milan 1979, p. 163, no. 174, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the paper tone is warmer and the green is deeper in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. The two adjoined sheets are attached verso to the mount in several places. All four edges are deckled. All of the collaged elements are securely adhered. Close inspection reveals a faint and unobtrusive circular media accretion on the upper edge, approximately 30cm from the upper left corner. All other surface irregularities are inherent to the artist's working process and choice of media.
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Executed in May 1976 on Captiva Island, Cy Twombly’s Untitled is the first work from a suite of nine that the artist produced in Robert Rauschenberg’s studio. In its signature juxtaposition of haphazard handwriting, urgent mark-making and an expressive painterly language, the work epitomises Cy Twombly’s unique formal vocabulary in which the boundaries between painting and writing have been obliterated in favour of a semantic unity of sign and form.

Inspired by Edmund Spenser’s (1552-1599) poem The Shephaerdes Calender, in which a country boy mourns his unfortunate love for Rosalinde, Cy Twombly has taken three lines from the first month of the calendar, in which the protagonist Colin Cloute compares his misfortunes to the sad season of the year. So deep-felt is his despair over Rosalinde that he shatters his pipe and casts himself to the ground, as is indeed legible in the last three lines of the penultimate verse that the artist has scribbled down:

My musing mynd, yet canst not, when thou should: 
Both pype and Muse, shall sore the while abye. 
So broke his oaten pype, and downe dyd lye.

By condensing Spenser’s poem to the finale of the tale, Cy Twombly has not only captured its essence in three lines of a verse, but has also dramatically singled out the source of the protagonist’s sorrow. Visibly enlarging the word Muse at the centre of the text, the artist emphasises the content of the poem through his expressive handwriting. Beautifully illuminating the eloquent visual poetry that characterises Twombly’s best work, Untitled resolves the form and content of Spenser’s poem through the artist’s direct writing. Echoing this synthesis of the story and its representation, the two fields of pale green watercolour below the text are separated through their material supports, each having its own sheet of paper - and therefore reflecting the same sense of disconnectedness in the poem.

Twombly’s reference to Spenser is not only the result of his interest in poetry, but may also be an auto-biographical reference. Since the artist had a relationship with Robert Rauschenberg in the early 1950s, the fact that this work was executed in the latter’s studio might reveal a more personal dimension to the story. Twombly's fascinating concoction of sources and references, alongside his iconic juxtaposition of language, scribbles and abstract painting, reveals Untitled as a profound meditation on the expressive possibilities of text and image.