Cy Twombly

Oscar and Renate Ackermann, Cologne
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1996

Heiner Bastian, ed., Cy Twombly, Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume II, 1961-1965, Berlin, 1992, cat. no. 144, p. 214, illustrated in color

This work is in very good condition overall. Please refer to the following condition report prepared by Simon Parkes Art Conservation. This work is framed.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Muses painted in 1963, during Twombly's creative zenith in Italy, is a vibrant response to Rome's Baroque elegance. However, though it reflects the artists' deep spiritual connection with the dramatic Roman landscape, it is one of his lighter 1960's compositions. There is a greater focus on the white canvas and his markings are more dispersed allowing for a better appreciation of each individual element.

Twombly first explained his commitment to 'whiteness' in an article in the Italian magazine L'esperienza moderna. Explaining how it was the essentially ubiquitous and transcendent nature of the color that appealed to him he wrote, 'the reality of whiteness may exist in the duality of sensation (as the multiple anxiety of desire and fear). Whiteness can be the classic state of the intellect, or a neo-romantic area of remembrance - or as the symbolic whiteness of Mallarmé..." (Cy Twombly, cited in 'Documenti di una nuova figurazione: Toti Scialoja, Gastone Novelli, Pierre Alechinsky, Achille Perilli, Cy Twombly,' in L'Esperienza moderna, no. 2, August-September 1957, p. 32) Mallarmé conceived of the white page as a vital spatial and temporal void that became charged with meaning through the 'play' of words upon it. Twombly's adoption of the white monochrome began alongside Rauschenberg's use of it in his black and white paintings in 1951-2, and he nurtured and developed it throughout the course of the 1950's and 60's.

Muses is one of a small series of paintings that mark the culmination of Twombly's early style of scribbled and loose scrawled writing. Since his first trip to Rome in 1953, Twombly had worked hard on 'untraining' his hand by practicing free drawing in the dark so as to allow his hand to create without the intervention of either sight or conscious thought. He was attempting to create a direct line between the hand and the nervous system. It was work spawned from the same spirit as Andre Breton's surrealist manifesto, "pure psychic automatism...dictated by thought in the absence of any control exercised by reason." Muses resembles some of the artist's expressionist tendencies, exuding the intuitive Surrealism of Gorky and the ecstatic disruptions of Kandinsky's early abstractions.

Twombly's work however can often not be attributed to a singular influence, thought or emotion. Not only do his inspirations range from the tactile to the ephemeral but the poetry of his vision lies in the layering of these sensations, expressions and experiences.  He is an artist who generates paintings out of nothing, awaiting a stimulus, sometimes for months at a time and then allows the thoughts and feelings it inspires to congeal as intuitive marks on the canvas. As the artist declared, "You can think of one thing when you're doing and before you get finished you are questioning something else...If you see a painting that's always coherent from the beginning to the end, it's something far from the main preoccupations or the character of the person, that's all. As much as you'd like to get away from yourself, you never do."