Last weekend, I visited the new Cy Twombly exhibition at the MFA—Making Past Present—in the company of a 9-year-old child. I should have anticipated her complaint: “Why are these pictures in an art gallery? I could have painted them!” It would be an enormous boon to adults in my position if museums displayed an admonitory wall panel, to appear at the entrance of every such exhibit, explaining
The most succinct-and-properly-complicated response to this question I've seen is in this short video in PBS's The Art Assignment series. I show it to students regularly—a set of observations and arguments from history that build and compound as the minutes tick by. Lots of ideas packed in here!
Cy Twombly's success shows how charitability in an artist's work is confined to a particular class and privilege. The general prima facie reaction to Twombley's work is not a wrong one. It makes one wonder why some artists can find major success with childish expression, often projected as having a deeper embodied meaning which gives substances to a substance-less work. Yet the same charity is rarely applied to other marginalized group of artists. The last statement isn't a criticism of you Kieran, just a general observation.
Another review, this one by Jackson Arn at The New Yorker: “His sheepish Europhilia announces itself and then cracks a joke to lighten the mood. Crudeness wraps itself in erudition like two kids in a trenchcoat.”
Cyrus the Great
The most succinct-and-properly-complicated response to this question I've seen is in this short video in PBS's The Art Assignment series. I show it to students regularly—a set of observations and arguments from history that build and compound as the minutes tick by. Lots of ideas packed in here!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67EKAIY43kg
Cy Twombly's success shows how charitability in an artist's work is confined to a particular class and privilege. The general prima facie reaction to Twombley's work is not a wrong one. It makes one wonder why some artists can find major success with childish expression, often projected as having a deeper embodied meaning which gives substances to a substance-less work. Yet the same charity is rarely applied to other marginalized group of artists. The last statement isn't a criticism of you Kieran, just a general observation.
Just remembered this lovely bit by Hari Kondabolu on/against abstract art (and Cy Twombly in particular): https://youtu.be/TKeFvHBRlKQ
Another review, this one by Jackson Arn at The New Yorker: “His sheepish Europhilia announces itself and then cracks a joke to lighten the mood. Crudeness wraps itself in erudition like two kids in a trenchcoat.”
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-art-world/cy-twombly-the-content-painter