Cy Twombly's things

Cy Twombly, master painter of rudimentary scrawl and bloom, made sculpture from the start. His carefully balanced arrangements of found and formed objects began in 1946 and continued in extended intervals until two years before his death in 2011. Though his work was rarely exhibited over his 60-year career (Twombly retained much of it in his Italian studios), Cy Twombly's Catalogue Raisonné of Sculpture (1997), edited by Nicola Del Roscio, made images of these human-scaled works more widely available. Nesin (Art Institute of Chicago) is an insightful, perceptive viewer and has emerged as an authoritative scholar on the artist's sculptural oeuvre. In this detailed and evocative volume, she engages the artist as sculptor and expertly guides readers through the history, material construction, object nature, and poetic resonance of Twombly's enigmatic assemblages. Made of common materials and exhibiting the touch of hand, these works conjure the ancient and liminal and engage in tensions of intimacy and ambiguity. Twombly's sculpture brings a mysterious, welcome, and deep-rooted presence. It is a tonic, perhaps, in today's artistic conversation-which includes the high-gloss polish of Koons. In that light, amid a range of feelings and possibilities, Twombly's work invites viewers to consider deeply the distance that fetish has traveled. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --Eric Baden, Warren Wilson College

Long considered one of the great American painters of the postwar period, Cy Twombly (1928-2011) now deserves consideration as an equally accomplished sculptor. Nesin, associate curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, examines the full progression and breadth of Twombly's sculpture, beginning with his earliest assemblage through his hiatus from the form and up to the final castings and pieces he finished. Throughout, Nesin proves an erudite critic and historian. Though her focus is not primarily biographical, she shows how Twombly's sculptures were quite personal. Nesin analyzes the "materiality and physicality" of the sculptures, including issues of "poeticity," "memorial affect," and "processes of replication and self-review." Most of the sculptures and assemblages are simple, and usually covered in white paint. Photographic representations, though "haunting," do not do them justice, though the book's photos tidily illustrate Nesin's commentary. Few of Twombly's sculptures have titles, but some of those that do, like his Thicket series, receive serious treatment, explication, and placement in the oeuvre. Twombly created no sculptures between 1959 and 1976, and Nesin deftly plumbs this period for context in explaining his motivations and materiality. With this deeper understanding of Twombly's sculptures and casts, his place in the pantheon of "artists' artists" grows more secure. 50 color and 50 b&w illus. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.