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Lot Essay
Sesostris II can be linked to a period in the mid 60s and early 70s of great artistic fertility in Cy Twombly's astounding oeuvre. In 1957 the artist moved to Rome, away from the repressive strictures of the critics and ideologues of New York's art world. Here, emerged in the culture and landscape of his adoptive home, Twombly liberated his poetic sensibility from the masculine rhetoric of gestural expressionism. The tone and tenor of his work became lighter and more open with a personal calligraphic style that seemed at once intimate and epic. It was also during this period that he began to create his first abstract sculpture, which, although varied in shape and material, were always coated with white paint.
In Sesostris II isolated elements are brought together in a complex visual dialectic. The fluency of Twombly's pictorial language, and his mastery of the graphic mark, is such that he is able to condense much of his artistic thinking into a seemingly spontaneous and rapid composition. Narrative legibility is replaced with a lyrical, rhythmic repetition - seen in the recurring flower motif and paper collage fragments - and an expressive immediacy.
In the mid 60s Twombly's work became more conceptual, with minimized imagery and a reduced palette. Exploring both movement and space across the picture plane, he found and used a variety of semiotic systems - mostly famously writing and numbers - as material for his paintings.
At the same time, he engaged deeply with a vast and antique cultural panorama. By incorporating diverse references and allusions, the viewer is ushered into a network of associations and signifiers, and thereby immersed in the grand narratives of western civilisation's cultural past.
In the current work both modes are evident. Scrawled across the lower edge in an inchoate script is the name Sesostris II, a Pharaoh from the 12th dynasty of Ancient Egypt. Above we see a series of flower motifs arranged with architectonic regularity, but rendered in a rough and improvised scrawl. The Water lily, or lotus as it is sometimes mistakenly called, was the floral symbol of Upper Egypt, shown, along with the papyrus flower, in tombs and temples to symbolise creation and fertility. The subtitle 'Captiva Island' is an island of the coast of Florida which has been the home of Twombly's friend and collaborator Robert Rauschenberg since 1970. The work was executed for a shared exhibition with Rauschenberg at the Leo Castelli Gallery in 1974, making the subtitle a biographical notation from Twombly's life.
Sosostris II is at first a subtle eulogy to a word of art that no longer exists. But the urgency of the execution and autonomy of line restore this vanished world to the mind of the viewer. The artist combines a virtuoso control of the graphic mark and compositional space with a timeless and lyrical archaeology of culture.
In Sesostris II isolated elements are brought together in a complex visual dialectic. The fluency of Twombly's pictorial language, and his mastery of the graphic mark, is such that he is able to condense much of his artistic thinking into a seemingly spontaneous and rapid composition. Narrative legibility is replaced with a lyrical, rhythmic repetition - seen in the recurring flower motif and paper collage fragments - and an expressive immediacy.
In the mid 60s Twombly's work became more conceptual, with minimized imagery and a reduced palette. Exploring both movement and space across the picture plane, he found and used a variety of semiotic systems - mostly famously writing and numbers - as material for his paintings.
At the same time, he engaged deeply with a vast and antique cultural panorama. By incorporating diverse references and allusions, the viewer is ushered into a network of associations and signifiers, and thereby immersed in the grand narratives of western civilisation's cultural past.
In the current work both modes are evident. Scrawled across the lower edge in an inchoate script is the name Sesostris II, a Pharaoh from the 12th dynasty of Ancient Egypt. Above we see a series of flower motifs arranged with architectonic regularity, but rendered in a rough and improvised scrawl. The Water lily, or lotus as it is sometimes mistakenly called, was the floral symbol of Upper Egypt, shown, along with the papyrus flower, in tombs and temples to symbolise creation and fertility. The subtitle 'Captiva Island' is an island of the coast of Florida which has been the home of Twombly's friend and collaborator Robert Rauschenberg since 1970. The work was executed for a shared exhibition with Rauschenberg at the Leo Castelli Gallery in 1974, making the subtitle a biographical notation from Twombly's life.
Sosostris II is at first a subtle eulogy to a word of art that no longer exists. But the urgency of the execution and autonomy of line restore this vanished world to the mind of the viewer. The artist combines a virtuoso control of the graphic mark and compositional space with a timeless and lyrical archaeology of culture.