In the wake of her book, Reading Cy Twombly: Poetry in Paint (Princeton University Press, 2016), Mary Jacobus will explore the use of quotations in one of Twombly’s major paintings.
The American painter Cy Twombly (1928-2011) lived in Rome from the 1950s onward. Despite his continuing links to the US, he described himself as a ‘Mediterranean’ painter. His vast tripartite canvas, Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the shores of Asia Minor, spanning two decades, was finally completed to coincide with his MoMA retrospective in 1994.
Previously known as Unfinished Painting, the painting exemplifies Twombly’s use of quotation in his painting–and the questions it raises. Say Goodbye includes a palimpsest of passages drawn from Rilke, Cavafy, and Seferis, among others. At a distance, it appears empty. Close-up, it provides a literary archaeology. How much do we need to know about Twombly’s quotations, and how do they affect the viewer of his work?
Mary Jacobus is professor emerita of English at the University of Cambridge and Cornell University, and an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. She has written widely on visual art, Romanticism, feminism, and psychoanalysis. Her recent books include The Poetics of Psychoanalysis: In the Wake of Klein (2005) and Romantic Things: A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud (2012).