"His work was in many ways infinitely more basic, even primitive, in its emphasis on direct old fashioned mark making, except that his feverish scribbles and calligraphic scrawls made that process seem new and electric."
(Roberta Smith, The New York Times, "An Artist of Selective Abandon," 7/7/11)
" . . . part of that electricity came from his ecstatic response to history, literature and other art."
(Roberta Smith, The New York Times, "An Artist of Selective Abandon," 7/7/11)
"His [Twombly] titles--Vengeance of Achilles, Leda and the Swan, Night Watch, School of Athens, Thermopylae, Lepanto, asserted again and again that no part of culture was so old that it could not inspire new art."
(Roberta Smith, The New York Times, "An Artist of Selective Abandon," 7/7/11)
"Throughout his career, Cy Twombly experimented with the abstraction of form and line to create works that are not only immediate and commanding, but also ambiguous and remote. In both his paintings and prints, Twombly explored the potential of a kind of false writing. Perhaps influenced by his work for the army as a cryptologist in 1953, he often incorporates deceptive, writing-like forms that momentarily seduce the viewer into believing that s/he could read the text as they would any written material. By transcending the distinctions between writing and pure form in these text-based pieces, Twombly forces the onlooker to simultaneously become both a reader and viewer in the traditional art-historical sense."
(Lorena Baines, Cy Twombly Prints, 2007)
