Reading Cy Twombly

The first book on the central importance of literary sources in the paintings of Cy Twombly

Many of Cy Twombly's paintings and drawings include handwritten words and phrases--naming or quoting poets ranging from Sappho, Homer, and Virgil to Mallarmé, Rilke, and Cavafy. Enigmatic and sometimes hard to decipher, these inscriptions are a distinctive feature of his work. Reading Cy Twombly poses both literary and art historical questions. How does poetic reference in largely abstract works affect their interpretation?

Reading Cy Twombly is the first book to focus specifically on the artist's use of poetry. Twombly's library formed an extension of his studio and he sometimes painted with a book open in front of him. Drawing on original research in an archive that includes his paint-stained and annotated books, Mary Jacobus's account--richly illustrated with more than 125 color and black-and-white images--unlocks an important aspect of Twombly's practice.

Jacobus shows that poetry was an indispensable source of reference throughout Twombly's career; as he said, he never really separated painting and literature. Among much else, she explores the influence of Ezra Pound and Charles Olson; Twombly's fondness for Greek pastoral poetry and Virgil's Eclogues; the inspiration of the Iliad and Ovid's Metamorphoses; and Twombly's love of Keats and his collaboration with Octavio Paz.

Twombly's art reveals both his distinctive relationship to poetry and his use of quotation to solve formal problems. A modern painter, he belongs in a critical tradition that goes back, by way of Roland Barthes, to Baudelaire. Reading Cy Twombly opens up fascinating new readings of some of the most important paintings and drawings of the twentieth century.

Mary Jacobus is professor emerita of English at the University of Cambridge and Cornell University, and an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. She has written widely on visual art, Romanticism, feminism, and psychoanalysis. Her recent books include The Poetics of Psychoanalysis and Romantic Things. She lives in Ithaca, New York, and Cambridge, UK.
[A] fresh and intricate study of Twombly's citations and overall engagement with verse. . . . [Jacobus] profitably confronts Twombly's work as a literary critic . . . enriching the work with themes of memory, time, concealment, sexuality, translation, and what she describes at one point as, 'the inexhaustible relation of image and text--distinct, yet propped on one another.'---James Miller, Hyperallergic
[D]azzles both visually and intellectually. . . . A fascinating exercise in elucidation.---Bill Marx, Arts Fuse
[Jacobus'] book is the most rigorous, sustained and challenging investigation of Twombly's engagement with the literary texts of antiquity, the Enlightenment and the Modern Canon. . . . Penetrating and illuminating. . . . By the end of her book, the reader who follows her argument has the tools necessary to engage fully with one of the most complex and challenging artists of the post-war period.---Jon Bird, Cambridge Humanities Review
A fine example of literary scholarship inspired by art.---Michael Bird, The Telegraph
In the book, erudite and descriptive passages show how poetry became central to Twombly. Jacobus illuminates the import of one medium on another, going beyond drawing an affinity between art and poetry to reveal Twombly as an artist engaged in deep study who sought not just correspondences between the mediums, but unity.---Michael Abatemarco, Santa Fe New Mexican
Jacobus . . . assesses with great acumen what Twombly's aims were, and shows brilliantly how he combines the various poetic motifs in his painting.---Marjorie Perloff, Times Literary Supplement
Jacobus successfully opens up new interpretations of many of Twombly's most renowned works.---Peter Gillies, Stride Magazine
Jacobus' careful reading and broad learning, her understanding of Twombly's art and the poetry he included in it, and her synthetic discussion of literature and art in various periods and genres--her chapter on pastoral is especially breathtaking--all make this a complex, stunningly memorable book.---Elizabeth Greene, Times Higher Education
Mary Jacobus . . . carries us on a marvellous voyage through the artist's mind and beyond.---Marina Warner, Observer
One of The Times Literary Supplement's Books of the Year 2016, chosen by Andrew Motion
Passionate, informed and thorough.---Kenneth Baker, The Art Newspaper
Polished and lusciously illustrated. . . . Perhaps the greatest joy when encountering this material for the first time is Jacobus' insights into the messy, paint-splattered 'Twombly anthology'.---Matthew Holman, Oxford Art Journal
Through unprecedented access to his notebooks and annotated sources--a vast pool encompassing everything from Homer to Pound--Jacobus elegantly illuminates the complex relationship between word and image in an oeuvre that teems with potentiality and impropriety.---Lucy Watson, Financial Times
A gripping and revelatory study.---Andrew Motion, Times Literary Supplement
A highly original study.-- "Apollo Magazine"
In this erudite book, Jacobus focuses on the poetic and literary allusions and the depth of thinking that went into Twombly's work. . . . The book includes excellent color reproductions, though they are small so do not communicate the impact of Twombly's huge paintings. Jacobus's book will be valuable for those interested in the literary sources for Twombly's art.-- "Choice"