Cy Twombly at Ca' Pesaro

I love the Itailian word for writing, scrittura. It’s almost onomatopoeic as its meaning and etymology offer the very act of writing—the scribe, the clerk, of the scriptum. I’m not inspired by the religious connotations of ‘scriptum’, but the weight of the word seems right: it is a composition, a document, even a contract./ As you will notice from a previous post, the title of this blog was in part inspired by such a rumination. My interest is to provide myself with, and share, a space for scrittura as part of Immagine: some kind of total image that grows over time, with reference to ‘imagination’ in English./ This is in mind as I enter the International Gallery of Modern Art, Ca’ Pesaro, to see a Cy Twombly exhibition, 'Paradise.' I have long been interested in Twombly’s work for the way it plays the line, or merges and enriches the line, between drawing/painting and writing. Yes, there is text in his work, but what really captivates me is his overall sense of Scrittura, if I can expand that to include the image./ Yes, you can see the Abstract Expressionist idea of automatic writing in Twombly’s work, which is, these days, not particularly exciting. But Twombly goes much further and takes on fuller concerns. Of note is the hand of the mark, the gesture and intent of the writer—that looping he does, for example, and the way he includes text that becomes image, and vice versa. It’s not so much that he creates a narrative, but that there’s a rhythm that creates syntax, particularly as he works in series./ The exhibition's introductory wall text is ecclesiastical, and the somewhat unfortunate inevitability of this makes me smile. Of most relevance to me, and the least effusive, is the sentence ‘His innovative use of language and broad range of allusion and reference open his work to history, literature, and philosophy, blurring the boundaries between painting, drawing, and writing, while preserving a degree of abstraction.’ Although sometimes monumental and bold, Twombly’s works work more quietly on me, like an artist’s script that I walk into, follow, and come back to./ An exhibition in photo is different to an exhibition in person. Some images follow as excerpts, however. They seek to capture a little of Twombly’s syntax and rhythm, and his flirtation with the act of language: its jots, lines, marks and colours, and its continuance.