Cy Twombly

About this book

Cy Twombly (1928-2011) lived a very secluded life for many years. It is therefore all the more surprising how many great photographers he allowed to document the space in which he lived and worked, a place where his art, antiques collection, everyday objects, and furniture blended into an indissoluble, unique amalgam of art and life. From his own photographs of the Fulton Street studio he shard with Robert Rauschenberg in New York in 1953 to Sally Mann's pictures of his Lexington studio in 1999, Twombly repeatedly opened his doors to a prominent group of photographers. Horst P. Horst, Bruce Weber, François Halard, David Seidner, Deborah Turbeville, Tacita Dean, Ugo Mulas, and many others could not resist the artist's charisma, his art, and the creative atmosphere of his special lifestyle, and they documented their visits in photo essays, sometimes quite extensively. In addition, the artist himself was an excellent photographer who continuously captured his environment with his camera, thus creating his own partial portrait, revealed to the world by Twombly only later and with the help of the Schirmer/Mosel publishing house. Cy Twombly: Homes & Studios brings together the most beautiful photographs taken in Twombly's studios and houses in New York, Rome, Bassano in Teverina, Gaeta, and Lexington over a period of five decades. Two introductory texts accompany the pictures. Nicola Del Roscio, the artist's collaborator for many years, provides the biographical background for the homes and workplaces that were mostly furnished, looked after, and maintained by him. In the second text, German art writer Florian Illies illuminates the unique relationship between Twombly, this American avant-gardist in Rome, and the art and literature of classical antiquity. He locates the relationship in the pictures that photographer Horst P. Horst made for American Vogue in 1965, photographs that capture this relationship with particular intensity. -- Dust jacket flap.