Cy Twombly: Sculpture
Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London, UK
30 September – 21 December 2019
This exhibition took place at Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill gallery at the end of last year, but I didn’t have the chance to write about it at the time—and I didn’t want to let it go unmentioned. Cy Twombly is an artist I really like. The last Twombly exhibition I truly enjoyed was back in 2011 at Dulwich Picture Gallery, where his work was shown alongside Poussin, an artist he deeply admired.
As we entered the gallery, we found ourselves surrounded by a constellation of sculptural works arranged across the two main spaces. Many were coated in Twombly’s signature white paint—his own kind of “marble”—evoking the purity and austerity of classical sculpture. Some pieces hinted at architecture or geometry, while others recalled Egyptian or Mesopotamian statuary through their rectangular plinths and circular forms.
Twombly assembled these sculptures from found materials—plaster, wood, iron—transforming humble fragments into poetic objects. Their modest scale and tactile surfaces link them closely to his paintings. The matte white paint gave the pieces such an intriguing texture that I felt genuinely tempted to touch them.
Like his paintings, the sculptures summon narratives from antiquity, as well as literary and poetic fragments. Yet Twombly always insisted that sculpture demanded something very different. In an interview with David Sylvester for his 2000 exhibition at Kunstmuseum Basel, he said:
“[Sculpture is] a whole other state. And it’s a building thing. Whereas the painting is more fusing—fusing of ideas, fusing of feelings, fusing projected on atmosphere.” Cy Twombly
To me, it feels as though Twombly saw sculpture as a kind of architectural assembling—almost like constructing a small LEGO figure—whereas painting was more akin to blending ingredients into an entirely new dish.
Not all the works were white. A few were painted in soft pinks, which delighted us—especially The Art Blackberry, who happened to be wearing a coat in the exact same shade. The harmony between the artworks and her outfit made for unexpectedly beautiful photographs, which you can see below.
I hope we’ll soon see another exhibition dedicated to Twombly’s painting or sculpture. I loved spending time with these works, but I still find myself drawn more strongly to his paintings—they offer more layers of interpretation. Of course, that’s simply a personal preference.
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