.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
A masterfully poetic scene with beautifully haunting skeletal boats floating along a vast sea of white, Cy Twombly’s Solar Barge of Sesostris is a poignant continuation of the artist’s baroque paintings of the 1960s, as well as an important impetus for his highly celebrated cycles, Coronation of Sesostris, 2000 and Lepanto, 2001. Indeed, by the time Twombly painted Solar Barge of Sesostris in 1985, he had already been drawing his own uniquely visceral responses to the epic legends and myths of heroes and gods for nearly twenty years. Crafting a distinctive lexicon of sensuous colors frenetically applied to paper and canvas, Twombly quickly came to terms with the rich artistic heritage of his Italian home. And yet, as Suzanne Delahunty has recounted, Twombly “did not portray his gods and heroes in the moment of classical apotheosis like the busts that silence the Grand Salon of Statues in the Capitoline Museum. Rather, he...unmasked the heroes’ human moment of death, a violent death that was their shared and tragic fate” (S. Delehanty, “The Alchemy of Mind and Hand,” 1975, Writings on Cy Twombly, Munich, 2002, p. 65). It is in this way that Twombly’s fleet of ancient Egyptian funerary boats, brings new dimension to his quest to reinvigorate the ancient world.
In 1957 Twombly settled permanently in Rome, where the Mediterranean culture and atmosphere of the city provided a perfect locale for the development of his poetic sensibilities. Shifting away from his more densely packed gestural works vaguely reminiscent of the New York School, Twombly’s paintings from the late 1950s into the early 60s began to evolve into a unique pictorial language that began to invoked ancient classical myths and histories immersed into a contemporary experience. “One may assume that Twombly’s experience of Rome, of its living architectonic and pictorial continuity, and the contact the city offered to painters of the Renaissance, opened up fundamental perceptions which were only to find concrete painterly expression in works from 1960 on, after years of personal reflection,” Heiner Bastian explained, also noting that, for Twombly, the inspiration of classical mythology and allegorical fiction would become “ideal material for a landscape of myth and metamorphosis” that would reoccur “again and again in his painting and never quite leave him” (H. Bastian, ed., Cy Twombly Paintings Vol. I 1952-1976, Frankfurt, 1978, p. 39). Enchanted by Rome’s rich history and its legacy of classical, medieval and Renaissance masters, Twombly absorbed his surroundings and channeled his interpretations through highly gestural drawings and paintings.
It was in Rome in the 1960s when Twombly began to develop his archetypal boat motif—elegantly upward curved strokes topped with a frenzy of downward slopping lashes, which undoubtedly featured more prominently in his work when he relocated to the hilly coastal town of Gaeta overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. Yet, it was not until a 1981 series of Solar Barge drawings that the motif would be cemented as a mainstay in the artist’s paintings, drawing, photographs, and even sculptures. Indeed, the ancient Egyptian notion of the solar barge fit perfectly into Twombly’s heroic pantheon of myths and legends. It was believed that the sun god, Ra, travelled through the sky in a large boat providing light to the world. For twelve hours each day, Ra would ride his barge, known as Atet, by the twelve protective deities of the day. And for twelve hours each night, Ra would ride his barge by the twelve protective deities of the underworld until he appeared again on the eastern horizon. In many of the ancient Egyptian mortuary texts, Ra’s journey upon Atet symbolized the god’s growth, decline, death, and resurrection. Similarly, many Egyptian pharaohs buried full sized vessels near their pyramids, temples, and other funerary sites. While the exact history and function of these ships is not entirely known, historians have surmised them to be ritual vessels used to carry the resurrected pharaoh aside the sun god across the heavens.
Twombly spent the winter of 1984 and ’85 in Egypt, where he stayed at the Old Winter Palace at Luxor—the ideal place to watch modern day cargo boats slowly drift down the Nile. It was there that Twombly became fully inspired by the funerary objects at the Cairo Museum—where he would have come face to face with the solar barges used to ship the soul into the afterlife. It is even likely that Twombly would have seen the newly excavated, perfectly preserved barge of King Khufu, who commissioned the Great Pyramid of Giza where the ship was found. It is without doubt that this trip would have served as the impetus for several important works including his iconic sculpture, Winter’s Passage: Luxor, and Solar Barge of Sesostris both which the artist began immediately after returning to Gaeta.
While the artist had previously explored the epic legend of Sesostris many years earlier through the symbol of the lotus, it would appear that his fateful trip to Egypt would recast Sesostris as the solar barge through much of the 1980s and 90s, culminating in the monumental painting cycle in ten parts known as the Coronation of Sesostris. The tale of Sesostris was made popular in the ancient Greek historian, Herodotus’ Histories. Herodotus tells of the mythical Egyptian pharaoh’s conquest northward through Asia Minor and westward into Europe, where he defeated the Scythians and Thracians. Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, and Pliny the Elder also told stories of “the Great” Sesostris’ war-making and world building, crediting him with everything from being a great law-maker to introducing the caste system in Egypt. Indeed, Sesostris is largely believed to be on the pharaoh Senusret III of the Twelfth Dynasty, with the possible addition of memories of other namesake pharaohs of the same dynasty, as well as Seti I and Rameses II of the Nineteenth Dynasty. However, the legend of the victorious king, and the epic narration of the conquest attributed to him by Herodotus would have alone placed him perfectly among Twombly’s genre paintings.
While the real Senusret III may not have conquered the vast amount to lands as described in the legends of Sesostris, he was among few Egyptian kings who were deified and honored with a cult during their lifetime. Credited for clearing navigable canals throughout the Nile, as well as establishing massive river forts in his conquered territories, the barge motif becomes all too fitting for Twelfth Dynasty pharaoh. In fact, in 1956 a group of archeologist uncovered six solar barges belonging to the pharaoh—two of which Twombly would have seen at the Cairo Museum. And yet, most hauntingly prophetic was a discovery made five years after the artist’s death—a whitewashed, graffitied wall of starkly drawn funerary barges with long slender oars, created nearly 3,800 years ago for the original Sesostris.
In 1957 Twombly settled permanently in Rome, where the Mediterranean culture and atmosphere of the city provided a perfect locale for the development of his poetic sensibilities. Shifting away from his more densely packed gestural works vaguely reminiscent of the New York School, Twombly’s paintings from the late 1950s into the early 60s began to evolve into a unique pictorial language that began to invoked ancient classical myths and histories immersed into a contemporary experience. “One may assume that Twombly’s experience of Rome, of its living architectonic and pictorial continuity, and the contact the city offered to painters of the Renaissance, opened up fundamental perceptions which were only to find concrete painterly expression in works from 1960 on, after years of personal reflection,” Heiner Bastian explained, also noting that, for Twombly, the inspiration of classical mythology and allegorical fiction would become “ideal material for a landscape of myth and metamorphosis” that would reoccur “again and again in his painting and never quite leave him” (H. Bastian, ed., Cy Twombly Paintings Vol. I 1952-1976, Frankfurt, 1978, p. 39). Enchanted by Rome’s rich history and its legacy of classical, medieval and Renaissance masters, Twombly absorbed his surroundings and channeled his interpretations through highly gestural drawings and paintings.
It was in Rome in the 1960s when Twombly began to develop his archetypal boat motif—elegantly upward curved strokes topped with a frenzy of downward slopping lashes, which undoubtedly featured more prominently in his work when he relocated to the hilly coastal town of Gaeta overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. Yet, it was not until a 1981 series of Solar Barge drawings that the motif would be cemented as a mainstay in the artist’s paintings, drawing, photographs, and even sculptures. Indeed, the ancient Egyptian notion of the solar barge fit perfectly into Twombly’s heroic pantheon of myths and legends. It was believed that the sun god, Ra, travelled through the sky in a large boat providing light to the world. For twelve hours each day, Ra would ride his barge, known as Atet, by the twelve protective deities of the day. And for twelve hours each night, Ra would ride his barge by the twelve protective deities of the underworld until he appeared again on the eastern horizon. In many of the ancient Egyptian mortuary texts, Ra’s journey upon Atet symbolized the god’s growth, decline, death, and resurrection. Similarly, many Egyptian pharaohs buried full sized vessels near their pyramids, temples, and other funerary sites. While the exact history and function of these ships is not entirely known, historians have surmised them to be ritual vessels used to carry the resurrected pharaoh aside the sun god across the heavens.
Twombly spent the winter of 1984 and ’85 in Egypt, where he stayed at the Old Winter Palace at Luxor—the ideal place to watch modern day cargo boats slowly drift down the Nile. It was there that Twombly became fully inspired by the funerary objects at the Cairo Museum—where he would have come face to face with the solar barges used to ship the soul into the afterlife. It is even likely that Twombly would have seen the newly excavated, perfectly preserved barge of King Khufu, who commissioned the Great Pyramid of Giza where the ship was found. It is without doubt that this trip would have served as the impetus for several important works including his iconic sculpture, Winter’s Passage: Luxor, and Solar Barge of Sesostris both which the artist began immediately after returning to Gaeta.
While the artist had previously explored the epic legend of Sesostris many years earlier through the symbol of the lotus, it would appear that his fateful trip to Egypt would recast Sesostris as the solar barge through much of the 1980s and 90s, culminating in the monumental painting cycle in ten parts known as the Coronation of Sesostris. The tale of Sesostris was made popular in the ancient Greek historian, Herodotus’ Histories. Herodotus tells of the mythical Egyptian pharaoh’s conquest northward through Asia Minor and westward into Europe, where he defeated the Scythians and Thracians. Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, and Pliny the Elder also told stories of “the Great” Sesostris’ war-making and world building, crediting him with everything from being a great law-maker to introducing the caste system in Egypt. Indeed, Sesostris is largely believed to be on the pharaoh Senusret III of the Twelfth Dynasty, with the possible addition of memories of other namesake pharaohs of the same dynasty, as well as Seti I and Rameses II of the Nineteenth Dynasty. However, the legend of the victorious king, and the epic narration of the conquest attributed to him by Herodotus would have alone placed him perfectly among Twombly’s genre paintings.
While the real Senusret III may not have conquered the vast amount to lands as described in the legends of Sesostris, he was among few Egyptian kings who were deified and honored with a cult during their lifetime. Credited for clearing navigable canals throughout the Nile, as well as establishing massive river forts in his conquered territories, the barge motif becomes all too fitting for Twelfth Dynasty pharaoh. In fact, in 1956 a group of archeologist uncovered six solar barges belonging to the pharaoh—two of which Twombly would have seen at the Cairo Museum. And yet, most hauntingly prophetic was a discovery made five years after the artist’s death—a whitewashed, graffitied wall of starkly drawn funerary barges with long slender oars, created nearly 3,800 years ago for the original Sesostris.