Cy Twombly: A Survey of Photographs 1954-2011 @Gagosian

JTF (just the facts): A total of 102 color photographs, framed in brown and matted, and hung against white walls in a single room on the 5th floor of the gallery. Additionally, 2 portfolios (several images on view for each) are displayed in wood/glass cases in the center of the space. All of the works are color dry-ink prints (some mounted on cardboard), made between 1951 and 2011. Physical dimensions of the prints range from roughly 8x17 to 28x25 and editions range in size from 3+2AP to 10+2AP. A catalog of the exhibit is available from the gallery for $80 (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Gathered together in conjunction with an exhibit of Cy Twombly's exuberantly gestural last paintings, this show provides a retrospective look at the artist's lesser known efforts with a camera. Starting with a few Morandi-like glass bottle still lifes from his time at Black Mountain College in the early 1950s and continuing all the way through recent floral images from a cemetery in St. Barths in 2011, the survey offers an inside look at Twombly's approach to photographic problem solving and aesthetic experimentation. It's a mixed bag full of thoughtful trial and error, and a surprisingly intimate and personal sampler of visual tests and memories.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Twombly's photographs is their unexpected texture. Taken as Polaroids and then printed using the relatively arcane color dry print (AKA Fresson) process, the prints have a luscious tactile quality, almost like washed out watercolors. Regardless of subject matter, the inks float over the paper, the colors becoming ephemerally soft and blurred. The effect is a mix of Pictorialism in color and outright romance.

Compositionally, Twombly seemed to be drawn again and again to changes in scale to create abstraction. Whether looking a vase of tulips, an ancient sculpture in shadows, or up at the silhouette of trees in the sky, he produced sets of images that move in and out, allowing blurring, distortion, and edge cropping to happen naturally. His three portfolios of striped pink tulips are the strongest and most original works in the show. Twombly gets right up close, turning clusters of petals into blasts of fiery yellow, creamy pink, and rich red. Graininess turns into subtle Pointilism, and flowers break down into component parts of curving fuzzy color. The permutations are seemingly endless, especially as the shapes become more indistinct and illegible. Separate groups of white peonies and yellow tulips get the same treatment, although to slightly less boldly abstract ends.

Twombly tries his fragmented vision on serious bits of ancient stone sculpture as well, but these images seem much fussier, like he was trying to hard too be artistic. Aside from a wonderfully blended swirl of paint brushes in a can, his studio interiors and outdoor landscapes are generally forgettable, and Twombly's seascapes are equally boring, except for a dark whorled sunset bleeding orange, ochre, and yellow. Other later images of lemons, glossy green leaves, and other table top remains are more successful, bathing in a warm golden glow and exploring more complex spatial relationships. His last images start with white crosses and tombstones and periscope into overexposed piles of lush lilies, daisies, and roses, becoming more and more expressive with each dissolving step forward.

Seen as an entire career-length body of work, Twombly's photographs are decidedly uneven. But at their best, his images are effusively inventive, hypnotizing in their diffusing abstraction, and warmly nostalgic in their sumptuous, lavish, painterly color.

Collector's POV: The individual prints and portfolios in this show are priced between $30000 and $80000 each. Twombly's photographs are not readily available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for those collectors interested in following up.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Feature/Review: NY Times (here)

Cy Twombly: A Survey of Photographs 1954-2011
Through December 22nd

Gagosian Gallery
980 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10075

Book: Cy Twombly, Photographs

JTF (just the facts): Published in 1993 by Matthew Marks Gallery (here), in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name. Unpaginated, with 29 color images. Includes details on the portfolios/editions and a short essay by William Katz. The images were taken in Italy between 1984 and 1986 and printed between 1990 and 1994. The prints are grouped into portfolios, in editions of 10+2AP. (Cover shot at right, via Amazon.)

Comments/Context: I was recently nosing around in Dashwood Books (here) and came across this Cy Twombly catalog. I've been meaning to educate myself about Twombly's use of photography, and this seemed like a good place to start.

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The term "pictorialist", when applied to an early 20th century photographer making works in the style of paintings, has evolved to have a generally negative connotation, a reminder of the soft focus banality of mothers and daughters and overly artful landscapes. In seeing these contemporary works, where a painter is making works in the style of photographs, calling Twombly a "pictorialist" seems less like a cutting put down and more like an apt characterization of his approach. His images of classical busts, a riot of pink tulips, or the skyward view of tree branches are unabashedly romantic and painterly; it is no wonder he was labeled an Expressionist.

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The prints have been made using the Fresson process, a print making approach I associate with the work of Shelia Metzner. The process highlights the texture of the underlying paper, creating washes of fuzzy tactile color, gradations of tone smoothed out into soft blurs; everything seems bathed in warm Italian sunlight. The indistinct nature of the process is a perfect match for Twombly's close up cropped compositions, which vibrate between swirls of positive and negative space, stepping into the realm of abstraction.

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While Twombly is of course primarily know as a painter, these are surprisingly enticing photographs; it is always astonishing to me when something new can be done with a pot of tulips. Dig up a copy of this book to see a painter's view of photography and to be reminded that pictorialism doesn't have to be a dirty word.

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Collector’s POV: Cy Twombly is represented by Gagosian Gallery in New York (here). His photographs have not been readily available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option at this point for interested collectors. For our collection, the portfolio Tulips II, which has the floral images which are the most undefined and ethereal of the series, would be a terrific fit.

Transit Hub:

• 2008 exhibition of photographs at Huis Marseille (here)
• 1996 Artscenecal review of show of photographs at Gagosian (here)