Cy Twombly : cycles and seasons

Edited by Nicholas Serota ; with essays by Nicholas Cullinan, Tacita Dean, Richard Shiff. New York, N.Y. : d.a.p. ; London : Tate Publishing, 2008. Quarto, illustrated gatefold wrappers, very small bump to head of spine, pp. 269, illustrated. A fine copy. Scarce.

“A serious comprehensive overview of Cy Twombly’s art has been much in demand for many years, and in this publication we at last have one. Accompanying a major touring retrospective to mark Twombly’s eightieth year, it surveys a vast output of paintings, drawings and sculpture by an artist whose indifference to supposed distinctions between Pop and abstraction, between writing, drawing and painting, and between literature and art had, for many years, brought his work severe neglect. Twombly’s art upsets the prudish purist with its hybridism; as he declares, “I’m not a pure; I’m not an abstractionist completely. There has to be a history behind the thought.” For Twombly, this history entails a wealth of literary and mythic allusion and an openness to all kinds of forms.” – the publisher