.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
One of Twombly's Roman Note series, which the artist executed in 1970, this work reflects the artist's extension of his handwriting into an idiosyncratic semi abstract 'script' that seems to transform the picture surface into an abstract and conceptual arena of time and space.
The Roman Notes grew out of a series of paintings of 1970 in which Twombly returned to the looped scrawl that he had first developed in his so-called 'blackboard' paintings of the late 1960s. Initially a response to Leonardo's nature studies in which the Renaissance artist had attempted to analyze the flow of natural phenomena such as wind and water, Twombly's repeated cyclical motion of this loose undulating and non-figurative script echoed Leonardo's remarkable graphic approach to interpreting the perceptual mysteries of the world. Seemingly aware of the inadequacy of Leonardo's approach, but evidently marvelling at the inherent poetry of the artist's obsession, Twombly has taken the same graphis approach. Twombly's basic aesthetic differs, however, in the way that he lays the emphasis on the uniquely personal idiosyncracies of an abstract line so that, like a signature, they highlight the work's sense of authorship and of being the product of a unique personal identity. In this way, these works can be seen to reflect the Post-Minimalist aesthetic that was beginning to emerge in the art of both Italy and America in the late 1960s where, within the structure of Minimalist and Conceptual form, a unique sense of individuality was allowed, if not actively encouraged to emerge.
The Roman Notes grew out of a series of paintings of 1970 in which Twombly returned to the looped scrawl that he had first developed in his so-called 'blackboard' paintings of the late 1960s. Initially a response to Leonardo's nature studies in which the Renaissance artist had attempted to analyze the flow of natural phenomena such as wind and water, Twombly's repeated cyclical motion of this loose undulating and non-figurative script echoed Leonardo's remarkable graphic approach to interpreting the perceptual mysteries of the world. Seemingly aware of the inadequacy of Leonardo's approach, but evidently marvelling at the inherent poetry of the artist's obsession, Twombly has taken the same graphis approach. Twombly's basic aesthetic differs, however, in the way that he lays the emphasis on the uniquely personal idiosyncracies of an abstract line so that, like a signature, they highlight the work's sense of authorship and of being the product of a unique personal identity. In this way, these works can be seen to reflect the Post-Minimalist aesthetic that was beginning to emerge in the art of both Italy and America in the late 1960s where, within the structure of Minimalist and Conceptual form, a unique sense of individuality was allowed, if not actively encouraged to emerge.