Papers by Anthi-Danaé Spathoni
Nouvelle revue d’esthétique, n° 33(1), 131-147., 2024
Cy Twombly est un artiste très secret. De son vivant, il ne laissait personne entrer dans son ate... more Cy Twombly est un artiste très secret. De son vivant, il ne laissait personne entrer dans son atelier pendant qu’il peignait et seulement quelques photographes ont pu en franchir le seuil. C’est l’artiste lui-même qui offre le meilleur accès à son univers dans ses ateliers de New York, Rome, Bassano in Taverina ou Gaeta et dans sa ville natale de Lexington : une publication récente, Cy Twombly : Homes & Studios (Nicola Del Roscio, Schirmer/Mosel, 2019), nous permet d’avoir un aperçu de ses lieux de travail par des clichés choisis avec soin par l’artiste. Face à ces photographies de Twombly, une question se pose : quel usage fait Twombly de la photographie d’atelier ? Dans cet article, nous allons explorer ce thème à travers l’étude approfondie de ces prises de vue, et analyser trois approches et regards différents de l’artiste sur son espace créatif : les vues d’ensemble, les natures mortes et les détails.
Cy Twombly is a very private artist. During his lifetime, he did not let anyone enter his atelier while he was painting. A few photographers only were able to capture his homes and studios. But the artist is the best to let us into his creative world, his studios in New York, Rome, Bassano in Taverina or Gaeta and his hometown of Lexington. A recent publication, Cy Twombly: Homes & Studios (Nicola Del Roscio, Schirmer / Mosel, 2019), allows us to observe these workplaces, carefully chosen by the artist. In front of these Twombly photographs, a question arises: how does Twombly use his camera to capture his studio? In this article, we offer an in-depth study of these photographs so as to explore this question and reveal the artist’s different approaches to his creative space.
Intermédialités. Histoire et théorie des arts, des lettres et des techniques/ Intermediality History and Theory of the Arts, Literature and Technologies, 2022
From the artist’s very first photo-paintings to the most recent abstracts, landscape has been an ... more From the artist’s very first photo-paintings to the most recent abstracts, landscape has been an omnipresent subject in Gerhard Richter’s career that presents a complete openness to different media, especially photography. This article attempts to study these multidisciplinary and intermedial references, the dialogue and mingling of the arts, as well as their contribution to landscape painting. Its purpose is to show not only how Richter integrates other works and characteristics from different arts, but also how works of art earlier in time can be perceived in his landscape depictions. To this end, the study of some representative examples helps us embrace various aspects of Richter’s practice, especially the ones that engage in a particular dialogue with abstraction, rendering the works of art, as it will be shown, into intra-, inter-, trans-, and multi-medial landscapes.
Résumé
Le paysage est un sujet omniprésent dans l’oeuvre de l’artiste allemand Gerhard Richter. Depuis ses premières photopeintures marines, le paysage est enrichi par des médias artistiques différents et, surtout, la photographie. Cet article essaie d’explorer ces relations et références intermédiales créées, le mélange des arts et leur contribution au genre paysager. À cette fin, l’étude des exemples caractéristiques de ses paysages nous aidera à révéler le dialogue entre l’oeuvre d’art et l’abstraction, la tradition picturale et les autres arts, et ainsi découvrir un palimpseste des paysages intra-, inter-, trans-, multi-médiaux.
Revue de littérature comparée, 2022
Dans la longue tradition d’ut pictura poesis, les artistes favorisent le dialogue de la poésie av... more Dans la longue tradition d’ut pictura poesis, les artistes favorisent le dialogue de la poésie avec la peinture et mettent en relation le texte avec l’image. Les peintres s’inspirent des textes littéraires qui leur servent de source pour leurs œuvres picturales. Une relation intéressante se développe : la transposition d’une œuvre (A), le texte, à une autre œuvre (B), la peinture. Cet article montrera que ce transfert (A->B) décrit une relation dialectique qui fonctionne dans les deux sens (A <-> B), c’est-à-dire que l’œuvre (B) revient à son œuvre de référence (A) en la complétant et l’enrichissant. L’analyse de la série Fifty Days at Iliam (1978) de Cy Twombly et son rapport à l’Iliade d’Homère nous permettront d’étudier le passage du texte à l’image et ainsi de montrer les nombreuses affinités des peintures avec le poème épique. Dans une deuxième étape, nous développerons ces relations dialectiques afin de revenir au texte source et tenter de mieux comprendre les correspondances complexes créées entre deux œuvres d’art.
English
From text to image and back to text, Cy Twombly and Homer
During ut pictura poesis’ long tradition, the artists encourage poetry’s dialogue with painting and often relate text to image. Painters are inspired by literary texts which they use as a source for their pictorial works. An interesting relationship is thus created: the transposition of a work of art (A), the text, to another work (B), the painting. This article aims to show that this transfer (A->B) describes a dialectical relation that works both ways (A <-> B). This means that the work (B) not only returns to its work of reference (A), but also that (B) has an impact on (A): it completes it and enriches it. The analysis of Cy Twombly’s series Fifty Days at Iliam (1978) and its relationship to Homer’s Iliad will allow us to study this passage from text to image and show the paintings’ affinities with the epic poem. Then, these dialectical relationships will be developed further in order to return to the text-source and try to better understand the complex correspondences between the two works of art.
Revista de História da Arte - Série W, n.º 11 - Times and Movements of the Image, 2022
David Hockney has spent his entire life painting traditional pictorial genres such as landscape w... more David Hockney has spent his entire life painting traditional pictorial genres such as landscape with the help of different means: photography, computer design programs, digital photography, fax machines and, more recently, iPhones and iPads. During the 1980s, the use of technology allowed him to apply to painting what camera experimentation had taught him. He adapted photography’s medium specificities (capturing time, movement and stillness) to his landscapes. He smashed traditional
perspective and engaged in a new multifocal representation of space, setting his compositions in motion. Hockney seduces his viewer inside the canvas and offers him a space-time experience on which the perception and understanding of the painting are fully depended. Through the analysis of Hockney’s oeuvre, this paper explores how landscape continues its long tradition in the 21st century’s post-painting era, enriched and revitalized as a genre thanks to the contribution of different media.
LA DIANA | 2 - RIVISTA SEMESTRALE DELLA SCUOLA DI SPECIALIZZAZIONE IN BENI STORICO ARTISTICI DELL’UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI SIENA , 2021
In 2006 Cy Twombly was chosen to decorate the ceiling of the Louvre’s Salle des Bronzes. The late... more In 2006 Cy Twombly was chosen to decorate the ceiling of the Louvre’s Salle des Bronzes. The latest ceiling commission at the museum dated back to 1953, when Georges Braque executed Oiseaux for the ceiling of Salle Henri II. Completed in 2010, Ceiling (le Plafond) departs from the artist’s signature trembling line while retaining other characteristics of his pictorial language. Twombly treated the ceiling as an easel painting of monumental dimensions: a surface he filled with an almost monochromatic blue field, evoking the sky and recalling Giotto’s Arena Chapel vault. Simple, geometric motifs trace the ceiling’s contours, while inscriptions naming seven sculptors from ancient Greece invite the visitor for a walk around the gallery. This paper shows how Twombly articipated in the long tradition of ceiling painting by building a strong connection between the space, content, and context of the room: a site in which the viewer plays a decisive role. With a rare example of monumental 21st century painting, sited where one might not expect to encounter abstraction, Twombly made his entrance into the Louvre’s pantheon of great artists, gaining, as one critic put it, «33 meters of immortality».
Nel 2006 Cy Twombly fu invitato a decorare il soffitto della Salle des Bronzes del Louvre. L’ultima commissione di questo tipo al museo risaliva al 1953, quando Georges Braque dipinse i suoi Oiseaux per il soffitto della Salle Henri II. Completato nel 2010, Ceiling (le Plafond) si allontana dalla linea ‘tremolante’ dell’artista pur mantenendo altre caratteristiche del suo linguaggio pittorico. Twombly ha trattato il soffitto come un dipinto da cavalletto di dimensioni monumentali: una superficie che ha riempito con un campo blu quasi monocromatico, che evoca il cielo e richiama la volta della Cappella degli Scrovegni di Giotto. Semplici motivi geometrici definiscono i contorni del soffitto, mentre i nomi di sette scultori dell’antica Grecia invitano il visitatore a una passeggiata nella galleria. Questo articolo mostra come Twombly
partecipi della lunga tradizione della pittura decorativa costruendo una forte relazione tra lo spazio, il contenuto e il contesto della stanza: un luogo in cui lo spettatore gioca un ruolo decisivo. Con un raro esempio di pittura monumentale del XXI secolo, realizzato laddove non ci si potrebbe aspettare di incontrare l’astrazione, Twombly hafatto il proprio ingresso nel pantheon dei grandi artisti del Louvre, guadagnando così, come disse un critico, «33 metri di immortalità».
IKON: Afterlife of Antiquity - Case Studies and New Perspectives in Iconology, p. 373-382, 2020
Cy Twombly’s painting Arcadia (1958) refers to the Greek region in the Peloponnese where Theocrit... more Cy Twombly’s painting Arcadia (1958) refers to the Greek region in the Peloponnese where Theocritus placed his shepherds in his bucolic poems and, Virgil transformed to a symbol, the distant and utopian locus amoenus of pleasure and love. In painting, Arcadia became a theme, an ideal and classical landscape in Nicolas Poussin’s canvases. Twombly used elements from Virgil’s classical Arcadia to construct a new one. As an American, the painter did not share the burden of the cultural heritage that other European artists would feel. Like the Romans, who freely interpreted Greek myths in the past, playing with a cultural heritage that was not their own, Twombly provided a fresh look to classical subjects with the approach of an ‘outsider’. From the late 1950s on, he took the liberty of painting a graffiti-like Arcadia, bucolic landscape-like paintings or green monochrome versions of the subject. Through the study of Twombly’s Arcadia, as an example of a classical subject treated in contemporary painting, this article focuses on the artist’s constant dialogue with Antiquity and shows how the painter’s balance between imitatio of the ancients and inventio of his own means achieve a renewal of the subject itself.
Ligeia vol. 173-176, no. 2, 2019, pp. 7-20., 2019
Robert Rauschenberg gomme le dessin de de Kooning en 1953, Lucio Fontana entaille la toile en 195... more Robert Rauschenberg gomme le dessin de de Kooning en 1953, Lucio Fontana entaille la toile en 1958, Niki de Saint-Phalle tire dessus la toile pour faire ses « tir paintings » en 1961 et Miro les brûle en 1973. Pour les artistes de la deuxième moitié du XXème siècle, la destruction se transforme en un acte à l’origine du processus créatif. Gerhard Richter fait partie de cette génération et, depuis 1989, attaque la photographie : il applique sur une photographie de petite taille (10x15) de la peinture, la racle avec un couteau et recouvre les motifs photographiés. Ces photographies dites surpeintes sont jusqu’à aujourd’hui peu connues et très peu exposées. Le public parisien a actuellement une rare occasion de les découvrir à la Fondation Louis Vuitton. Inspiré par cette exposition, cet article s’intéresse à ce geste destructif qui produit les photographies surpeintes. Plus particulièrement, notre attention se concentre sur l’intervention sur l’image photographique qui met en question ses caractéristiques et sa nature photographique même. Nous montrerons ainsi comment cet « esprit » destructif produit un nouveau support qui oscille entre la photographie et la peinture, l’abstraction et la figuration, les différentes matières et les différents media.
Nouvelle revue d’esthétique 2018/1 (n° 21), pages 131 à 141, 2018
Quels sont les rapports au paysage dans l’œuvre de Cy Twombly ? Comment le paysage est-il présent... more Quels sont les rapports au paysage dans l’œuvre de Cy Twombly ? Comment le paysage est-il présent ? Peut-on parler d’un paysage abstrait ? Le but de cet article est d’étudier la notion du paysage et la manière dont elle se combine au vocabulaire abstrait de l’artiste. Nous tentons de décrire le fruit de cette combinaison et de l’inscrire dans un cadre théorique. Dans un deuxième temps, nous éprouvons cette démarche à travers l’analyse de l’œuvre Untitled Painting (Say goodbye Catullus to the shores of Asia Minor), 1994.
_____________________________
How is the work of Cy Twombly connected to landscape? How is landscape present? Is it possible to speak of an abstract landscape? Through the analysis of Untitled Painting (Say goodbye Catullus to the shores of Asia Minor), 1994, this article studies the notion of landscape and the ways it is combined with the artist’s vocabulary.
Études Stéphane Mallarmé, n° 5, p. 77- 88, 2017
The American painter Cy Twombly is an artist who is greatly interested in poetry and especially i... more The American painter Cy Twombly is an artist who is greatly interested in poetry and especially in Mallarmé. This article examines the relationship between the poet and the painter. Using an interdisciplinary approach it tries to show how both of them use a similar technique which allows them to produce works which lie half-way between both arts.
ZWITSCHER-MASCHINE.ORG NO. 6 / AUTUMN 2018, 2018
In Antiquity, the Greeks used the verbs »write« and »draw« as synonyms. Actually, both words have... more In Antiquity, the Greeks used the verbs »write« and »draw« as synonyms. Actually, both words have their origin in the word graphé [γραφή] : grapho (to write) and zo-graphizo (to paint / draw) which literally means »to write the living things«. This article explores whether and how these two actions may have had a similar meaning in the 20th century. The works of Paul Klee and Cy Twombly, which can both include painting, writing and poetry, seem ideal examples to answer these questions.
Walking Art / Walking Aesthetics , 2019
On the eighteenth century gallery walls, paintings are "hung like sardines". The Salon of 1787 at... more On the eighteenth century gallery walls, paintings are "hung like sardines". The Salon of 1787 at the Louvre, engraving by Pietro Antonio Martini, shows how paintings were presented at the Salon in the Louvre's salle carrée: no less than four rows of paintings cover the walls, from top to bottom. The room is filled with hundreds of paintings of all sizes, "the "best" pictures stay in the middle zone; small pictures drop to the bottom". As O'Dorothy points out, traditional painting reveals an image that creates an isolated entity in a perspective system. The perspective gives the illusion of the painting-window, "a portable window that, once set on the wall, penetrates it with deep space". The heavy frame around the painting is enough to create a discontinuity of space: "there is no suggestion that the space within the picture is continuous with the space on either side of it". Landscape painting is the first to disrupt this tradition. It gradually cancels perspective and thus creates "an ambiguous surface". Turner, Monet and later, Kandinsky are the first to break with the past. Monet in particular not only changes the pictorial space but also modifies the exhibition space where the work is located (such as his Nymphéas, 1914-1926, in the musée de l'Orangerie). This example was followed by the Americans. Americans' abstract canvas, a field filled with colors all over, grows in size. The pictorial space is flat, without illusion of depth (spacelessness) or weight (weightlessness). The painting is reduced to a wall decoration. Abstract expressionists understand the picture plane as an integral part of the gallery's architecture. This new conception of the easel painting influences the real space in which the artwork is exhibited. The picture's space is not to be found only within the limits of the canvas, it also includes the place where the picture hangs. Painters are interested in the area around the painting. Abstract Expressionists "followed the route of lateral expansion, dropped off the frame, and gradually began to conceive the edge as a structural unit through which the painting entered into a dialogue with the wall beyond it". Rothko's painting leaves the impression that his squares float in an open and infinite space. The effect of each canvas continues in the canvas next to and in the gallery. Pollock's painting has no beginning and no ending. In contrast to the "autonomous" painting of the nineteenth century , what matters is the continuity between paintings as an ensemble. Seventeenth century's presentation can no longer exist in the twentieth century. Traditional museum galleries stifle abstract expressionist painting. The installation photographs of the Jackson Pollock exhibition at the Betty Parson Gallery in 1950 show how inadequate the gallery is for the new American painting. Rooms are too small, paintings touch the floor and ceiling causing a glare effect (see the illustration of Peter Arno, New Yorker, September 23, 1961). Museum galleries have to adapt to [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]
Conference by Anthi-Danaé Spathoni
Seeger Center, Princeton University, Wednesday, March 22, 2023 4:30 p.m. Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103
“[Twombly’s] worktables are covered with oil crayons; pencils; tubes of pigment; postcard reprodu... more “[Twombly’s] worktables are covered with oil crayons; pencils; tubes of pigment; postcard reproductions of boats and marine scenes; a big Manet art book open to a page that shows a boat painting; stacks of other art books (Ensor, Whistler, Turner); and a book of modern Greek poems in translation, turned to George Seferis’s “Three Secret Poems.” Several lines of one stanza have been altered by Twombly, with some words inked out. A section of the edited and spliced poem (with a few new words added by Twombly) is written on the canvas of Summer [Quattro Stagioni], in Twombly’s inimitable, childish scrawl”.
This is what Dodie Kazanjian witnessed when she visited Cy Twombly in his studio in Gaeta for a piece in Vogue, in 1994: a studio full of books gathering various references on art and poetry, all wide open while the artist worked. George Seferis was indeed one of the poets, all along with C.P. Cavafy, Twombly used repeatedly during the early 1990s in his pictorial and sculptural work. Twombly’s library shows his attachment to Modern Greek poetry counting numerous editions of different translations. These books trace the painter’s “active” reading and treatment of the poetic verse which, once transferred to canvas, becomes a pictorial motif. Through the study of Twombly’s reading of Seferis’ and Cavafy’s poetry, this paper aims to examine the text-image and painting-poetry dialogue as they are shaped throughout the different stages of the creative process, when the painter faces the poet.
https://eventsignup.ku.dk/nordik2022/program , 2022
The NORDIK Association for Art Historians is hereby announcing the conference taking place 25.-27... more The NORDIK Association for Art Historians is hereby announcing the conference taking place 25.-27.10. 2022 under the heading “Collections”. The conference is virtual and signup is free. Organized in collaboration with the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, the University of Copenhagen.
For registration and detailed schedule, see: https://eventsignup.ku.dk/nordik2022/conference
Colloque organisé par le Pôle Courbet, en partenariat avec l’Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA - Paris), 2022
À l’occasion de la restauration et de l’ouverture au public du dernier atelier de Gustave Courbet... more À l’occasion de la restauration et de l’ouverture au public du dernier atelier de Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) à Ornans, le pôle Courbet, en partenariat avec l’Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA – Paris), organise un colloque international autour du peintre et de la notion d’atelier.
THIRTEEN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF ICONOGRAPHIC STUDIES
Rijeka, 30 - 31 May 2019
THURSDAY 15th NOV 2018
Caldas da Rainha School of Arts and Design, Polytechnic Institute of
Leiri... more THURSDAY 15th NOV 2018
Caldas da Rainha School of Arts and Design, Polytechnic Institute of
Leiria (IPLeiria-ESAD.CR)
FRIDAY 16th NOV 2018
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (FCSH/NOVA)
Introduzione alle problematiche del convegno: Dipingere la battaglia Jérôme Delaplanche Accademia... more Introduzione alle problematiche del convegno: Dipingere la battaglia Jérôme Delaplanche Accademia di Francia a Roma-Villa Medici I Sul muro: la sfida delle battaglie monumentali 10.00 Presiede Sybille Ebert-Schifferer Joana Barreto Université Lyon 2 De la séquence au cycle : évolution des mises en espace de la narration historique à l'époque moderne
Le texte comme transposition d'art de l'image et l'image comme transposition d'art du texte
In 2006, Cy Twombly was chosen to decorate the ceiling of the Louvre’s Salle de Bronzes, becoming... more In 2006, Cy Twombly was chosen to decorate the ceiling of the Louvre’s Salle de Bronzes, becoming the first contemporary artist to receive a ceiling commission at the museum since 1953, when Georges Braque executed Oiseaux for Salle Henri II. Completed in 2010, Ceiling (Le Plafond) departs from the artist’s signature trembling line while retaining other characteristics of his pictorial language. Twombly treated the ceiling as an easel painting of monumental dimensions (4,300 square feet), a surface he filled with an almost monochromatic blue field, evoking the sky and recalling Giotto’s Arena Chapel. Simple, geometric motifs trace the ceiling’s contours, while inscriptions naming seven sculptors from ancient Greece invite the visitor for a walk around the gallery. This paper will show how Twombly participated in the long tradition of ceiling painting by building a strong connection between the space, content, and context of the room – a site where the viewer plays a decisive role. With a rare example of monumental 21st century painting, sited where one might not expect to encounter abstraction, Twombly made his entrance into the Louvre’s pantheon of great artists, gaining, as one critic put it, “33 meters of immortality.”
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Papers by Anthi-Danaé Spathoni
Cy Twombly is a very private artist. During his lifetime, he did not let anyone enter his atelier while he was painting. A few photographers only were able to capture his homes and studios. But the artist is the best to let us into his creative world, his studios in New York, Rome, Bassano in Taverina or Gaeta and his hometown of Lexington. A recent publication, Cy Twombly: Homes & Studios (Nicola Del Roscio, Schirmer / Mosel, 2019), allows us to observe these workplaces, carefully chosen by the artist. In front of these Twombly photographs, a question arises: how does Twombly use his camera to capture his studio? In this article, we offer an in-depth study of these photographs so as to explore this question and reveal the artist’s different approaches to his creative space.
Résumé
Le paysage est un sujet omniprésent dans l’oeuvre de l’artiste allemand Gerhard Richter. Depuis ses premières photopeintures marines, le paysage est enrichi par des médias artistiques différents et, surtout, la photographie. Cet article essaie d’explorer ces relations et références intermédiales créées, le mélange des arts et leur contribution au genre paysager. À cette fin, l’étude des exemples caractéristiques de ses paysages nous aidera à révéler le dialogue entre l’oeuvre d’art et l’abstraction, la tradition picturale et les autres arts, et ainsi découvrir un palimpseste des paysages intra-, inter-, trans-, multi-médiaux.
English
From text to image and back to text, Cy Twombly and Homer
During ut pictura poesis’ long tradition, the artists encourage poetry’s dialogue with painting and often relate text to image. Painters are inspired by literary texts which they use as a source for their pictorial works. An interesting relationship is thus created: the transposition of a work of art (A), the text, to another work (B), the painting. This article aims to show that this transfer (A->B) describes a dialectical relation that works both ways (A <-> B). This means that the work (B) not only returns to its work of reference (A), but also that (B) has an impact on (A): it completes it and enriches it. The analysis of Cy Twombly’s series Fifty Days at Iliam (1978) and its relationship to Homer’s Iliad will allow us to study this passage from text to image and show the paintings’ affinities with the epic poem. Then, these dialectical relationships will be developed further in order to return to the text-source and try to better understand the complex correspondences between the two works of art.
perspective and engaged in a new multifocal representation of space, setting his compositions in motion. Hockney seduces his viewer inside the canvas and offers him a space-time experience on which the perception and understanding of the painting are fully depended. Through the analysis of Hockney’s oeuvre, this paper explores how landscape continues its long tradition in the 21st century’s post-painting era, enriched and revitalized as a genre thanks to the contribution of different media.
Nel 2006 Cy Twombly fu invitato a decorare il soffitto della Salle des Bronzes del Louvre. L’ultima commissione di questo tipo al museo risaliva al 1953, quando Georges Braque dipinse i suoi Oiseaux per il soffitto della Salle Henri II. Completato nel 2010, Ceiling (le Plafond) si allontana dalla linea ‘tremolante’ dell’artista pur mantenendo altre caratteristiche del suo linguaggio pittorico. Twombly ha trattato il soffitto come un dipinto da cavalletto di dimensioni monumentali: una superficie che ha riempito con un campo blu quasi monocromatico, che evoca il cielo e richiama la volta della Cappella degli Scrovegni di Giotto. Semplici motivi geometrici definiscono i contorni del soffitto, mentre i nomi di sette scultori dell’antica Grecia invitano il visitatore a una passeggiata nella galleria. Questo articolo mostra come Twombly
partecipi della lunga tradizione della pittura decorativa costruendo una forte relazione tra lo spazio, il contenuto e il contesto della stanza: un luogo in cui lo spettatore gioca un ruolo decisivo. Con un raro esempio di pittura monumentale del XXI secolo, realizzato laddove non ci si potrebbe aspettare di incontrare l’astrazione, Twombly hafatto il proprio ingresso nel pantheon dei grandi artisti del Louvre, guadagnando così, come disse un critico, «33 metri di immortalità».
_____________________________
How is the work of Cy Twombly connected to landscape? How is landscape present? Is it possible to speak of an abstract landscape? Through the analysis of Untitled Painting (Say goodbye Catullus to the shores of Asia Minor), 1994, this article studies the notion of landscape and the ways it is combined with the artist’s vocabulary.
Conference by Anthi-Danaé Spathoni
This is what Dodie Kazanjian witnessed when she visited Cy Twombly in his studio in Gaeta for a piece in Vogue, in 1994: a studio full of books gathering various references on art and poetry, all wide open while the artist worked. George Seferis was indeed one of the poets, all along with C.P. Cavafy, Twombly used repeatedly during the early 1990s in his pictorial and sculptural work. Twombly’s library shows his attachment to Modern Greek poetry counting numerous editions of different translations. These books trace the painter’s “active” reading and treatment of the poetic verse which, once transferred to canvas, becomes a pictorial motif. Through the study of Twombly’s reading of Seferis’ and Cavafy’s poetry, this paper aims to examine the text-image and painting-poetry dialogue as they are shaped throughout the different stages of the creative process, when the painter faces the poet.
For registration and detailed schedule, see: https://eventsignup.ku.dk/nordik2022/conference
Caldas da Rainha School of Arts and Design, Polytechnic Institute of
Leiria (IPLeiria-ESAD.CR)
FRIDAY 16th NOV 2018
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (FCSH/NOVA)
Cy Twombly is a very private artist. During his lifetime, he did not let anyone enter his atelier while he was painting. A few photographers only were able to capture his homes and studios. But the artist is the best to let us into his creative world, his studios in New York, Rome, Bassano in Taverina or Gaeta and his hometown of Lexington. A recent publication, Cy Twombly: Homes & Studios (Nicola Del Roscio, Schirmer / Mosel, 2019), allows us to observe these workplaces, carefully chosen by the artist. In front of these Twombly photographs, a question arises: how does Twombly use his camera to capture his studio? In this article, we offer an in-depth study of these photographs so as to explore this question and reveal the artist’s different approaches to his creative space.
Résumé
Le paysage est un sujet omniprésent dans l’oeuvre de l’artiste allemand Gerhard Richter. Depuis ses premières photopeintures marines, le paysage est enrichi par des médias artistiques différents et, surtout, la photographie. Cet article essaie d’explorer ces relations et références intermédiales créées, le mélange des arts et leur contribution au genre paysager. À cette fin, l’étude des exemples caractéristiques de ses paysages nous aidera à révéler le dialogue entre l’oeuvre d’art et l’abstraction, la tradition picturale et les autres arts, et ainsi découvrir un palimpseste des paysages intra-, inter-, trans-, multi-médiaux.
English
From text to image and back to text, Cy Twombly and Homer
During ut pictura poesis’ long tradition, the artists encourage poetry’s dialogue with painting and often relate text to image. Painters are inspired by literary texts which they use as a source for their pictorial works. An interesting relationship is thus created: the transposition of a work of art (A), the text, to another work (B), the painting. This article aims to show that this transfer (A->B) describes a dialectical relation that works both ways (A <-> B). This means that the work (B) not only returns to its work of reference (A), but also that (B) has an impact on (A): it completes it and enriches it. The analysis of Cy Twombly’s series Fifty Days at Iliam (1978) and its relationship to Homer’s Iliad will allow us to study this passage from text to image and show the paintings’ affinities with the epic poem. Then, these dialectical relationships will be developed further in order to return to the text-source and try to better understand the complex correspondences between the two works of art.
perspective and engaged in a new multifocal representation of space, setting his compositions in motion. Hockney seduces his viewer inside the canvas and offers him a space-time experience on which the perception and understanding of the painting are fully depended. Through the analysis of Hockney’s oeuvre, this paper explores how landscape continues its long tradition in the 21st century’s post-painting era, enriched and revitalized as a genre thanks to the contribution of different media.
Nel 2006 Cy Twombly fu invitato a decorare il soffitto della Salle des Bronzes del Louvre. L’ultima commissione di questo tipo al museo risaliva al 1953, quando Georges Braque dipinse i suoi Oiseaux per il soffitto della Salle Henri II. Completato nel 2010, Ceiling (le Plafond) si allontana dalla linea ‘tremolante’ dell’artista pur mantenendo altre caratteristiche del suo linguaggio pittorico. Twombly ha trattato il soffitto come un dipinto da cavalletto di dimensioni monumentali: una superficie che ha riempito con un campo blu quasi monocromatico, che evoca il cielo e richiama la volta della Cappella degli Scrovegni di Giotto. Semplici motivi geometrici definiscono i contorni del soffitto, mentre i nomi di sette scultori dell’antica Grecia invitano il visitatore a una passeggiata nella galleria. Questo articolo mostra come Twombly
partecipi della lunga tradizione della pittura decorativa costruendo una forte relazione tra lo spazio, il contenuto e il contesto della stanza: un luogo in cui lo spettatore gioca un ruolo decisivo. Con un raro esempio di pittura monumentale del XXI secolo, realizzato laddove non ci si potrebbe aspettare di incontrare l’astrazione, Twombly hafatto il proprio ingresso nel pantheon dei grandi artisti del Louvre, guadagnando così, come disse un critico, «33 metri di immortalità».
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How is the work of Cy Twombly connected to landscape? How is landscape present? Is it possible to speak of an abstract landscape? Through the analysis of Untitled Painting (Say goodbye Catullus to the shores of Asia Minor), 1994, this article studies the notion of landscape and the ways it is combined with the artist’s vocabulary.
This is what Dodie Kazanjian witnessed when she visited Cy Twombly in his studio in Gaeta for a piece in Vogue, in 1994: a studio full of books gathering various references on art and poetry, all wide open while the artist worked. George Seferis was indeed one of the poets, all along with C.P. Cavafy, Twombly used repeatedly during the early 1990s in his pictorial and sculptural work. Twombly’s library shows his attachment to Modern Greek poetry counting numerous editions of different translations. These books trace the painter’s “active” reading and treatment of the poetic verse which, once transferred to canvas, becomes a pictorial motif. Through the study of Twombly’s reading of Seferis’ and Cavafy’s poetry, this paper aims to examine the text-image and painting-poetry dialogue as they are shaped throughout the different stages of the creative process, when the painter faces the poet.
For registration and detailed schedule, see: https://eventsignup.ku.dk/nordik2022/conference
Caldas da Rainha School of Arts and Design, Polytechnic Institute of
Leiria (IPLeiria-ESAD.CR)
FRIDAY 16th NOV 2018
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (FCSH/NOVA)
Throughout Gerhard Richter’s long career, landscape genre is among his favorite subjects and in constant exchange with different arts, especially photography that can take several functions. This dialogue broadens landscape’s notion and transforms it to a perpetually open work of art, as Gérard Genette would put it, integrating an infinite number of other works and thus obtaining an abundance of mobile relationships.
This paper explores these relationships as they develop in the artist’s different landscape practices. To this end, the wide concept of translation could be applied to describe the passage from one art to another: photography is translated into painting and, the canvas into the language and means of the photographic medium. Both painting and photography are transferred to the medium of the livre d’artiste which becomes an instrument to read and view both arts. In all those cases of intermedial translations, the original work of art loses all the qualities of its medium but, as it is adapted to another one, it gains new characteristics. Richter’s artistic poesis demonstrates how the transfer from one art to another that can go both ways (from art A to art B, and from art B to art A). The resulting works of art not only enrich and reinvent landscape painting. They are also products of equal artistic importance reversing translation’s traditional hierarchical structures.
‘Art and the Sea’
Thursday 12th September 2019
Seminar Room 1, University of Liverpool Management School,
Chatham Street, Liverpool L69 7ZH
Si la peinture abstraite n'a pas bien sûr fait mourir la peinture figurative qui existe après elle, si elle n'a pas supprimé le paysage pictural, quel peut bien être le sens, la nature et la portée, au sein de la peinture contemporaine elle-même, du paysage abstrait ? Quelles en sont les conditions de possibilité ? A quelles conditions un paysage abstrait est-il possible, c'est à dire réalisable pour le peintre et pensable pour l'historien et le théoricien de l'art ? Telles sont les questions rectrices de cette thèse qui entend déployer et explorer le paradoxe d'un paysage séparé-ce qui est bien le sens strict d'abstrait-de l'exigence de représentation mimétique d'un espace naturel ou urbain extérieur « d'un lieu assez élevé, où tous les objets auparavant dispersés se rassemblent sous un seul coup d'oeil » selon l'expression de Fénelon. Ce déploiement et cette exploration s'effectue sur les deux exemples des oeuvres de Cy Twombly et Gerhard Richter interprétées comme deux modalités différentes d'une relève du paysage, dépassant et conservant à la fois ce dernier sur le mode de l'évocation ou de la suggestion : par un langage purement pictural, par le langage des titres et des mots dans la peinture pour Twombly, par la photographie et la photo-peinture pour Richter. A cet égard, Twombly et Richter tentent tous les deux de mettre en oeuvre aux deux sens du terme, une rupture et une continuité : entre le forme du genre paysage et l'expérience paysagère au sein de l'espace de la galerie d'exposition, entre la tradition du paysage occidental (Poussin, Turner, Friedrich) et la peinture des peintres américains contemporains (Pollock, Rothko et Rauschenberg), entre la peinture et les autres média ou les autres arts auxquels elle se confronte (la poésie pour Twombly, la photographie et la littérature pour Richter). La thèse est donc construite comme un ensemble de croisements : entre deux artistes de deux cultures différentes, entre deux façons de réaliser la gageure d'un paysage abstrait, entre deux manières de reprendre tout en la subvertissant la tradition picturale depuis l'Âge classique, entre deux modalités d'une mise en travail des relations interartistiques. Car c'est bien l'ensemble de ces croisements qui rend possible le paysage abstrait renouvelant le genre du paysage, le libérant de ses règles traditionnelles et, ainsi, l'ouvrant à des formes inédites et étonnantes.
La réponse émerge de la surface elle-même : un de ses motifs principaux est la ligne. L’artiste y donne beaucoup d’importance. Dans le seul texte qu’il ait jamais publié, Twombly nous parle de la ligne : « Chaque ligne est l’expérience de son histoire intrinsèque. Elle n’illustre pas - c’est la sensation de sa propre réalisation » . Deux ans plus tard, Twombly nous livre son premier paysage, la série Poems to the Sea (1959). La ligne n’illustre pas mais construit entièrement le paysage. Les dessins se remplissent par des lignes droites, horizontales, ondulées, continues, courtes ou longues, lignes qui barrent d’autres signes, lignes colorées ou effacées par la peinture blanche. La ligne définit l’espace pictural et évoque les vagues de la mer et l’horizon. La ligne n’est pas seulement un motif mais aussi un geste. Pour la former, l’artiste reproduit l’acte d’écrire : il fait le mouvement de la main qui écrit avec un crayon. C’est une écriture calligraphique, un geste sans interruption. L’écriture elle-même est une écriture abstraite. Est-elle un poème ? Un poème sur la mer ou un poème à la mer, comme le titre l’indique ?
Ecrire la ligne devient dessiner le paysage. Pendant les années 60-70 jusqu’à la dernière décennie de sa vie, du petit geste des doigts, il passe au plus grand : Blackboard Paintings, Roses, III Notes from Salalah. La ligne devient également des lettres et les lettres forment des mots d’une écriture cursive. Ce sont les mots de poètes copiés sur la surface. Dans plusieurs cas, ils se réfèrent aussi au paysage : le mot l’évoque par sa signification et sa forme. Pour le spectateur, le paysage est un paysage à voir, à lire et à traverser. A travers l’analyse des paysages twombliens, cette communication espère contribuer au dialogue sur le paysage et, en particulier, le paysage dans l’art du XXe siècle.
TYWOMBLY/TWOMBLU: From the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Mediterranean
Washington and Lee University
Atrium Gallery
Barbara Crawford’s installation, TWOMBLY, TWOMBLU: From the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Mediterranean,is in honor of Cy Twombly’s Ceiling at the Louvre for the ten-year-anniversary of the work’s inauguration. Crawford’s painting reminds us of the light blue color of the Louvre’s ceiling and, at the same time, recalls Twombly’s monumental paintings of great dimension. In fact, the color blue, and its many variations, are often found in the work of Cy Twombly. For Barbara Crawford, this installation is “a visual investigation into the emotional and psychological aspect of the color”. But above all, it reflects the colors of the two geographical locations: the Blue Ridge and the Mediterranean, suggesting both Twombly’s cherished landscapes.