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Lot Essay
‘Energy, whose primary manifestation is in pure form … can only be expressed in painting or sculpture’
EZRA POUND
‘A bodily writing, the line of which wraps itself tirelessly around a void, around that which cannot be represented’
RICHARD LEEMAN
Painted in a warm, spiralling combination of oil paint and wax crayon, Lycian Drawing is one of a series of highly important graphic cycles of work that Cy Twombly made between 1981 and 1983. This cycle of works which, in addition to the Lycian Drawings, includes the series known as the Naxos, the Suma and the Nymphidia drawings, as well as the HRIH, the Om Mani Pad Me Hum, the Silex Scintillans or Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations and the Libation of Priapus drawings, represents the key focus of Twombly’s creativity during this period. Twombly made very few major paintings on canvas during this period, apart from working episodically on his large canvas Hero and Leander. Throughout this period he completed only three Bacchus paintings in 1981, and no canvases at all in 1982 and 1983, preferring to concentrate solely on works on paper and on making the occasional sculpture.
As Twombly’s archivist and assistant Nicola del Roscio has recalled of this period, it was a time when Twombly ‘had an infatuation with the Orient and the Middle East,’ and especially with the ‘life and poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi, the Persian poet who sparked [Twombly’s] ideas of the whirling dervishes’ symbolic dance, which unites man’s mind with God and is considered the only allowable theatrical representation in that part of the world’ (N. del Roscio, Cy Twombly Drawings: Catalogue Raisonné, Vol 7, Munich 2016, p. 7). Twombly’s Lycian Drawings are works that distinctly evoke this sense of whirling form and of spiritual energy spiralling in a wheel outside of the borders of time and space. Their title refers to the ancient region of Lycia (now Anatolia), the birthplace of many Ancient Greek and Near-Eastern myths and whose exact borders and precise identity remains lost to the mists of time. In his Lycian Drawings, as in his works entitled Nymphidia (named after a 17th Century fairy poem by Michael Drayton) and the Suma and the Om Mani Pad Me Hum drawings for instance, Twombly’s energized spiralling scrawl evokes a strange netherworld of spiralling energy reminiscent of the dance of the whirling dervishes and also of the meditative outpouring of bodily action and gesture into form. These drawings, which comprise essentially of what Mary Jacobus has described as ‘scribbled fireballs’ representative of ‘furious Dionysian energies’ like [Ezra] ‘Pound’s “vortex or cluster of fused ideas… endowed with energy”’, are also evocative of such things as the chakras or psychic energy centres which, according to Eastern mysticism, exist at various points within the body (M. Jacobus, Reading Cy Twombly, Princeton 2016, p. 118). Within the lexicon of Twombly’s own imagery too, such spirals evoke not only energy points within the body but also a fascination with such ancient mythical ideas as the mythological shield of Achilles, the fiery chariot wheels of Apollo heralding the dawn and even those of the first great middle-eastern Emperor Cyrus the Younger.
Evocative of all these associations but primarily focusing on the spiritual energy of the artist himself as he engages in the primordial act of making a mark and forming an image, what is conveyed in these ‘drawings’ is a sense of pulsing, concentrated energy simultaneously feeding from and pouring forth from a mysterious, borderless realm of the spirit. In the Nymphidia drawings this presumably refers to the microcosmic nether-world of fairies and sprites as defined in Drayton’s poem, in the Suma and Om Mani Pad Me Hum works, to the spiritual mastering of inner energy demanded by Eastern meditation, and in the Lycian Drawings to the unifying whirl of the Sufi dervishes and to the timeless sense of cohesion between East and West that is also symbolized by the ancient region of Lycia. As del Roscio has recalled, in these works, ‘Cy worked with bare fingers, applying the paint on paper... like a piano player. He would smear the surface deftly, creating the image in an easy way, without scruples, hesitation or pauses. I often wondered how it was possible for a human being to materialize or give significance or form to an abstraction filtered by the brain, or what synaptic chemistry of the brain cells would cause such activity. I regret not having ever asked him if, while working, he was prey to anguish, or fear, or pleasure, or music, since he could play the piano (when in the mood) inventing music for a short time like a flash (but how can one describe that grey zone of life, the foggy spaces of the psyche?)’ (N. del Roscio, Cy Twombly Drawings: Catalogue Raisonné, Vol 7, Munich 2016, p. 6). Emblazoned with the word ‘LYCIAN’ drawn boldly across the top of the page – its letter ‘A’ transformed into a pyramid or spearhead, as in earlier works invoking Alexander, Achilles and Apollo – this Lycian Drawing articulates a misty whirling vortex of form that appears to function on the invisible borderlines between the mind and the body and between spirit and matter. It is, as Richard Leeman has written of such works, a ‘bodily writing, the line of which wraps itself tirelessly around a void, around that which cannot be represented’ (R. Leeman, ‘Cy Twombly’s Speaking Body’, in Cy Twombly, exh. cat. Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2016, p. 130).
EZRA POUND
‘A bodily writing, the line of which wraps itself tirelessly around a void, around that which cannot be represented’
RICHARD LEEMAN
Painted in a warm, spiralling combination of oil paint and wax crayon, Lycian Drawing is one of a series of highly important graphic cycles of work that Cy Twombly made between 1981 and 1983. This cycle of works which, in addition to the Lycian Drawings, includes the series known as the Naxos, the Suma and the Nymphidia drawings, as well as the HRIH, the Om Mani Pad Me Hum, the Silex Scintillans or Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations and the Libation of Priapus drawings, represents the key focus of Twombly’s creativity during this period. Twombly made very few major paintings on canvas during this period, apart from working episodically on his large canvas Hero and Leander. Throughout this period he completed only three Bacchus paintings in 1981, and no canvases at all in 1982 and 1983, preferring to concentrate solely on works on paper and on making the occasional sculpture.
As Twombly’s archivist and assistant Nicola del Roscio has recalled of this period, it was a time when Twombly ‘had an infatuation with the Orient and the Middle East,’ and especially with the ‘life and poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi, the Persian poet who sparked [Twombly’s] ideas of the whirling dervishes’ symbolic dance, which unites man’s mind with God and is considered the only allowable theatrical representation in that part of the world’ (N. del Roscio, Cy Twombly Drawings: Catalogue Raisonné, Vol 7, Munich 2016, p. 7). Twombly’s Lycian Drawings are works that distinctly evoke this sense of whirling form and of spiritual energy spiralling in a wheel outside of the borders of time and space. Their title refers to the ancient region of Lycia (now Anatolia), the birthplace of many Ancient Greek and Near-Eastern myths and whose exact borders and precise identity remains lost to the mists of time. In his Lycian Drawings, as in his works entitled Nymphidia (named after a 17th Century fairy poem by Michael Drayton) and the Suma and the Om Mani Pad Me Hum drawings for instance, Twombly’s energized spiralling scrawl evokes a strange netherworld of spiralling energy reminiscent of the dance of the whirling dervishes and also of the meditative outpouring of bodily action and gesture into form. These drawings, which comprise essentially of what Mary Jacobus has described as ‘scribbled fireballs’ representative of ‘furious Dionysian energies’ like [Ezra] ‘Pound’s “vortex or cluster of fused ideas… endowed with energy”’, are also evocative of such things as the chakras or psychic energy centres which, according to Eastern mysticism, exist at various points within the body (M. Jacobus, Reading Cy Twombly, Princeton 2016, p. 118). Within the lexicon of Twombly’s own imagery too, such spirals evoke not only energy points within the body but also a fascination with such ancient mythical ideas as the mythological shield of Achilles, the fiery chariot wheels of Apollo heralding the dawn and even those of the first great middle-eastern Emperor Cyrus the Younger.
Evocative of all these associations but primarily focusing on the spiritual energy of the artist himself as he engages in the primordial act of making a mark and forming an image, what is conveyed in these ‘drawings’ is a sense of pulsing, concentrated energy simultaneously feeding from and pouring forth from a mysterious, borderless realm of the spirit. In the Nymphidia drawings this presumably refers to the microcosmic nether-world of fairies and sprites as defined in Drayton’s poem, in the Suma and Om Mani Pad Me Hum works, to the spiritual mastering of inner energy demanded by Eastern meditation, and in the Lycian Drawings to the unifying whirl of the Sufi dervishes and to the timeless sense of cohesion between East and West that is also symbolized by the ancient region of Lycia. As del Roscio has recalled, in these works, ‘Cy worked with bare fingers, applying the paint on paper... like a piano player. He would smear the surface deftly, creating the image in an easy way, without scruples, hesitation or pauses. I often wondered how it was possible for a human being to materialize or give significance or form to an abstraction filtered by the brain, or what synaptic chemistry of the brain cells would cause such activity. I regret not having ever asked him if, while working, he was prey to anguish, or fear, or pleasure, or music, since he could play the piano (when in the mood) inventing music for a short time like a flash (but how can one describe that grey zone of life, the foggy spaces of the psyche?)’ (N. del Roscio, Cy Twombly Drawings: Catalogue Raisonné, Vol 7, Munich 2016, p. 6). Emblazoned with the word ‘LYCIAN’ drawn boldly across the top of the page – its letter ‘A’ transformed into a pyramid or spearhead, as in earlier works invoking Alexander, Achilles and Apollo – this Lycian Drawing articulates a misty whirling vortex of form that appears to function on the invisible borderlines between the mind and the body and between spirit and matter. It is, as Richard Leeman has written of such works, a ‘bodily writing, the line of which wraps itself tirelessly around a void, around that which cannot be represented’ (R. Leeman, ‘Cy Twombly’s Speaking Body’, in Cy Twombly, exh. cat. Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2016, p. 130).