The light is always perfect at the VMFA. Never really noticed until right now, as I walk into the glassy atrium. But yeah, first observation of the day. Just struck me. Thought I’d share.
I’m with Monsieur Zohore, prolific artist and educator at VCU. He is so often traveling between his gallery residencies in LA, NYC, Paris and more, one can forget Richmond is his home base. I haven’t seen him in nearly a year.
Monsieur Zohore is accomplished and celebrated all over the world as a painter and installationist. He’s also very funny and insightful – a perfect sounding board and stoker of ideas alike. I asked him to come along with me to the VMFA to deconstruct and examine the Cy Twombly exhibit on display (until early January,) largely borrowed from the Yves St. Laurent museum in Marrakesh, Morocco.
These missions usually feel like a forensic exhumation of a body, picking through the mummified clues of a movement shelved, labeled, and embedded in curriculum. Studying Twombly feels more like a vivisection. So many of his motifs and stylistic notes are ingrained into the rhythm of current popular art. His popularity in the gallery world is countered by how often the phrase “but is it art?” seems to follow any introduction to his work. This prompt, the context of the creation of this exhibit, and the critical forensics due his genius is what we’ll be focusing on here.
Monsieur and I started our morning on my couch with a little herbal inspiration and proceeded to the gallery, where the light so impressed me. Tucked back into a small room on the 2nd floor of the museum was the Twombly exhibit , a bit humble in footprint, but like his work, much larger than first glance would impress.
All art lives in the context of environment and era, and this showing is no different. Imagine Cy Twombly, a native of Lexington VA, achieving a fellowship from this very same museum in 1952 and traveling to northern Africa and Italy with his new lover, Robert Rauschenberg, also a budding artistic titan of his time.
According to The Guardian, Twombly rescued Rauschenberg from a failed suicide by drowning attempt in 1951 while both were studying at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. This would be the first, but not the last, time they would find each other’s embrace. After receiving the traveling fellowship grant from the VMFA. Twombly invited “Bob” Rauschenberg to tag along to Sicily and points beyond. The New York Times commented on this adventure: “The eight month trip that followed was a turning point, a period that would define both of their careers and, as a result, American art in the second half of the 20th century.” A short but intense love affair would start, and leave a revolution in its wake.
Upon arriving, post-war Italy showcased ruins ancient and recent. Twombly had a fascination with antiquity contrasting Rauschenberg’s more contemporary fixations. The two spent most of the early weeks’ artistic energy behind a camera, in lieu of a canvas. It’s here that the VMFA exhibition begins, within a story of romance, lust, and adventure.
If you enter the exhibit and flow with the timeline of its story, you’ll come across a case of photos taken early on this trip. The camera will be shared between the two new lovers, playful expressions on each face en portrait against the ruins of post war Italy and or ensconced in nature, winter trees naked against bright cloudy skies. These are the photos of a couple commemorating a moment, not necessarily in the act of art creation.
Taking the room counterclockwise, we’re presented with the first of Twombly’s sketches on yellowed paper. The child-like scrawls of parallel vertical lines hashed horizontally in groups would appear thoughtless, margin doodles, until you look back at the photos. The forms on paper mirror and deconstruct the angular groves of nude trunks and limbs populating the aforementioned photos.
This forest/nature motif will come back again and again in his studies on paper, joined by increasingly sexual totems and subliminal shapes describing his surroundings and fixations. His full book of sketches from this time are present but under glass. A digital flipbook cleverly presented alongside the case is a must see. A lot of the insight that ties the project together lies in this resource.
The first painting presented here is prelude to the Abstract Expressionism he will become (in)famous for. Twombly still had much of idols in his brush as the piece instantly recalls Franz Kline (whose work is on display in an adjacent gallery). The long, woody vertical strokes share space with the pair of phalluses joined as if in procession through a glen.
The VMFA, rightly proud of their complicity in kickstarting his career, present a viewing case of Twombly’s appeal for a fellowship grant, and the museum’s responses and correspondence during the trip. I found it fascinating to get the sense of adventure and confidence he had on this journey.
The second and last painted work in this show continues to elicit Kline but has the budding of refinement to his unique expression. Energetic lines emanate from an ambiguous form one could describe as the crown of an erection or simply a mood of radiance – depending on how far from the proverbial gutter your mind is at the moment. His work on this trip shared time and emotional space with new love, lust and freedom. Wherever you are coming from in review of this period, these preoccupations cannot be set aside,
After contemplation and conversation at the museum, our munchies decided we should get hot dogs at Bamboo Cafe, because, well, they’re excellent. Here’s our conversation on the corner of Mulberry and Main…
Christian: It’s obligatory to mention when one covers Cy Twombly, the big question “But is it ART???”. I think Twombly was one of the original pioneers of a style that was aggressively a-stylistic. It taunts the status quo ideas of competency. And yet, to intentionally devolve a deft hand to child-like scrawls is incredibly difficult. What we all love about Jean Michel Basquiat’s masterpieces was inspired in large part by Cy Twombly.
Monsieur: Exactly. He was part of a counterculture poking the Establishment. More anti-stylistic than a-stylistic.
Christian: He clearly anticipated confusion from his audience, and got it. There’s a video on YouTube of Joe Rogan clearly not understanding his work – and that makes perfect sense to me. Any conversation about Twombly turns into a “my kid can do that” commentary.
Monsieur: If your kid can have a really complex, high concept interpretation of what image making should look like, then cool. I want to meet that kid.
Christian: So you take that comment, which is indicative of when we walked into the museum today. Without outing anybody, one of the first conversations we had on walking into the museum was with an employee.
Monsieur: Oh, our new friend! Yeah, literally that was the first thing when we asked “where’s the Cy Twombly exhibition?”. She was effusive in her response “Is that really art? Is it really?” Yeah, she didn’t get it but she went into a very compelling narrative about how people traveled all the way from Germany to come see this exhibition without being able to figure out why.
Christian: She just was perplexed by the idea that people would want to see these pieces, let alone leave their home country and travel this far for it. It’s funny to think about these things having to come from somewhere far away for us to see them at home, and then having people coming from somewhere else far away to enjoy them with us.The cavernous divide between the people who appreciate Twombly and those confused by him is cosmic in scale. Just a funny aside, the VMFA has a tiled, simple visual icon map of the many collections in the building. The one for Twombly is quite literally random squiggles you’d see in the margins of a fifth-grade notebook.
Monsieur: Richmond sometimes shortchanges the VMFA for being as potent, beautiful, and well thought out the curation of their exhibits are. I don’t think they get quite the respect they deserve. I mean, this is a VMFA fan club at this table.
Christian: My first apartment in Richmond was directly across the street from the VMFA. At one point I was in between jobs. Everyday, during that doldrum, I just went to the museum with a cup of coffee and just roamed the space. I’ve had a special relationship with it since. Anytime people come in from out of town, I send them there. My first recommendation is to go to the VMFA. But anyway, this isn’t a commercial, but kudos to them for having this show. They do factor into the history of this exhibition directly though. It’s truly exciting to see this show in this place. They literally paid for the voyage Cy Twombly was on when he created these images.
Monsieur: Yes! They even have the correspondence between Twombly and the museum Administrator at the time on display.
Christian: Leslie Cheek? Yeah. We established that he’s definitely a character on a BBC sitcom from the 70’s with that name. The “is it art” question has become moot of course. It’s well established as a yes. I love it. My answer to that question is like “what else would it be?” It’s inspired so many people. Just yesterday – day before yesterday, when I was thinking about writing this article, I called Al Diaz in New York, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s old best friend, about Twombly’s impact on his work. He responded “Well, you know, I don’t really know much about him. Like, he’s not really my guy. But Jean-Michel was like, nuts over the dude. That was his shit. He was all about some Cy Twombly.” It makes sense when you compare the two. Basquiat isn’t derivative of Twombly, but they’re painting from the same root language – their patois diverge but the ‘Latin’ is present.
Monsieur: They both have a de-skilled aesthetic that is much harder to achieve than criticize.
Christian: They’re both de-skilled in such a consistent way. I’ve always said like you make the same mistake often enough, it becomes a style. It does have roots in the question of whether my child can do that. It’s obviously bringing childishness to the overall palette of modern art. He has so many different periods of creation like the chalkboard series, the ‘loops’, his most famous works that emerge from this concept. The more he owns the deskilled hand, the more obvious the skill to express complexity with it becomes. I think that is the essence of style. You do it over and over again, with the same vision, you start seeing a musicality. A rhythm with a unique accent.
Monsieur: It was interesting watching his journey on this trip progress through his art. It seems like he’s recording information, because it clearly looks like he was reporting information. Not scribbling. More court stenographer like. He was able to move so quickly between these images that he was trying to record over and over again – variations of shapes. And as we moved around the exhibition, we noticed that some of the photographs that he was taking at the time, the plant life or landscape seemed to influence the tree forms he was making in the drawings. And that would then turn into the shape that he was making. It’s really interesting to be able to see that bridge, that bridge and also see that research. These ideas aren’t coming from nowhere. He’s not scribbling. These are purposeful constructs that he’s setting up for us to kind of wonder over and apply meanings.
*Someone walks over and compliments Monsieur’s boots*
Monsieur does have incredible boots on right now.
Monsieur: The photographs you mentioned, I think it was really, it was almost a direct correlation to what I’m talking about. His imagery turned into a lot of deliberately psychosexual forms. This is where the childish versus the adult comes through. Because these are concepts that a child who is drawing in this fashion and style would have no idea of. It does have a glaring juxtaposition of childish and clearly, adult preoccupations. These are rarely the full drawings that appear in his painted work. They are the field recordings of those shapes. They still have these amazing ideas of composition and mark making that exists within them. It’s possible that a child has this kind of discernment, but they seem so secure and so kind of wise. Especially when you see the world in relation to the correspondence about the works that was happening between the artist and his lover – and the VMFA. Then you are able to see all of these pretty graphic depictions. Actual genital forms. Even plant life sketches become ideas of germination and sexuality.
*our waitress sidles up*
Excuse me. Could we order some hotdogs?
Yes. Do you want anything on it?
Onions for me, ketchup, mustard. Okay, I’ll bring the ketchup mustard and onions on it.
Okay
You get a side with –
Fries please.
I will do the same. Onions and mustard
All right.
Thanks.
Christian: I feel a little My Dinner with Andre vibes here with you, haha. I love it. Let’s eat. We have more than enough for this article.
Cy Twombly, Morocco, 1952/1953 will be on display at VMFA until January 7, 2023, and admission is free to the public. More information can be found HERE
