Seduced by scribbles

I had heard of Cy Twombly, and had seen his work in reproduction. Inspired by the work of Rauschenberg, Johns, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, and others from the Black Mountain days, I passed Twombly by. I gave him just a passing glance. That is until a remarkable exhibition at the National Gallery in London : Encounters. In retrospect I believe that this was one of the most important exhibitions I have seen.
There was so much to look at in this exhibition, ... so much to distract, to draw attention, to inspire, to provoke so much thought, and yet Twombly's three piece contribution not only rivetted my attention at the time. I can remember the shock of the coup de foudre even now. It helped of course that they are huge. The photo at the top of them hanging in their now home in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia shows their scale.

Cy Twombly: Three studies from the Temeraire

Those paintings, and what Twombly had done with his inspiration from Turner's original would not leave my mind alone. I kept returning and turning that pebble in my brain. I did not understand, ... I was just going with the feeling of it.

Then four years later there was an exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery: Cy Twombly, Fifty Years of Works on Paper. I was determined to see it, and there the seduction was complete. I went with my duodidactic friend, and we still remember it as the best of days out together. We were entranced, inspired, ... knocked off our artistic feet.

Cy Twombly: Apollo and the artist

It was with great delight that I looked forward to the Tate Modern great retrospective four years after that, in 2008. Passion renewed, I now became more discriminating: forming preferences within the works, and learning to consider and weigh my responses. But I still did not understand why I had been so wholly seduced. My husband, with whom I can usually discuss my reactions and who can contribute rationality was no help this time as he withstood the seduction completely.

Now Twombly is dead, and because of that I have received my answer from another artist: Howard Hodgkin in an appreciation article in the Guardian Newspaper in addition to the obituary. He too had been knocked out by an encounter with Twombly's work, and he said "The experience was one of total immersion. He painted with such emotional freedom." That's it. That is it. It is as simple and as momentous as that.

But I still find that I don't get that great seductive pull from reproduction of work I have not seen myself. It is strangely as if encountering the art itself is like being in the company of the man, listening to his talk about his interests, his reactions, his opinions, his conversational meanderings; and that the reproductions are like seeing photographs of him. I am drawn through memory to reproductions of the pieces I have been lucky enough to enjoy in person, just as if they are photos of events with which I was involved, and that is sufficient. And so I am not desperately sorry that I won't make the current Twombly/Poussin exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.