80. CY TWOMBLY - A SPACE BETWEEN THE FLEETING AND THE PERMANENT.

Cy Twombly - Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio - ROME.

Cy Twombly - Bed, New York 1951. © Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio. As seen in M-A (A SPACE BEWTEEN) issue 3, still life image by Harry Nathan.

The impulsive frames of intensity - protected from the fear of forgetting. To resurrect these fleeting memories of atmospheres past - to return in a heartbeat.

The romantic pull to document the momentary seems essential to Cy Twombly, in all media - the artist's expression in response to what feels like a personal search - a meditation. His photographs propose and possess privacy, to realise a truth exposed in plain sight and yet like a phantom these documents feel other-worldly. Media meld to form a painted poem tangibly tender and suspended - a mirrored impression recognised over stark realities - to watch the dappled time hover like fireflies to dissipate through blind windows.

A ready-made medium of the polaroid fascinates, how the immediacy of processing is readily available, originally created for industries that needed an immediate response, speed compromised over quality, and yet the eyes of the Artist appreciate the granular, tertiary tone of its palette, its ephemeral nature and its ability to somehow blur a reality with the ambiguous.

The object of an image that drops from its camera, which physically is divided by the hands and quietly, magically appears from a charcoal beginning, a blueish illusion ghostly silhouetted - haunting the mechanical before revealing its soul as if organic and yet physically synthetic. A poetry observed, even leaked as if a secret.

The distant relation to the pinhole camera, ceremonially presented with a magician's flourish, the polaroid loses none of its appeal in the excited fingers of a Black Mountain College alumni in Cy, whose images feel like the impulsive blushes of tender gazes later found between the pages of seismic novels.

Where the scent of the gloaming is inhaled as the melody of the night ebbs the landscape. As the impressionists astonished at the passing of light after the rain or how a breeze disrupts the haze of palpable heat, so too does Twombly reflect the wonder of time. Images taken as if for his eyes only, show the invisible nature of daily rituals and seasonal shifts, repeated so many times that they become more instinctive than inquiring, remind that the beauty of the present can be profound and often hold a permanence of melancholy which contradicts the ephemeral nature of fragile polaroid prints.

The rucked-up sheets of an empty bed, still warm from a dream - are grazed by the morning, a light that glows over surfaces as canyons and rests in momentary languid pools and enveloping shadow.

Eyes rest on forms as atmospheres - as sculptures of silence - as if for the first time - watched from the floor, where an impression of fruit, plate, and table become one, where pea pods become landscapes and a misty valley - a bruise on the page. 

The blur of turning to hear a broken conversation or to see a room while dancing - A consciousness distracted by the sound of rain, a piano in another room, or a glimmering of light on a marble floor - where have I been?

—

Very special thanks to Nicola Del Roscio and Eleonora Di Erasmo - Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio.

A series of images by Cy Twombly are published within issue 3 of M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN, currently still available here along with 16 international stockists.

The M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) contemplation and interview series will return in Autumn 2024. Thank you for reading.