I believe that archives, like the Cy Twombly Foundation website, are living entities that are constantly evolving. We are often inclined to think of them as static entities, located in a certain place and designed purely for consultation and research. In fact, they are places that tell stories and therefore constantly pass through different space and time. Working on an archive means searching for continuous connections that often go outside their designated places and eventually find new forms, as in the case of Un/veiled.
Eleonora Di Erasmo
Eleonora Di Erasmo, managing director of the Cy Twombly Foundation, recounts the artist’s work archive through its dedicated website, recently renewed and enriched with the new section In Perspective, a natural extension of Un/veild, a visionary project curated by Nicola Del Roscio (Fondazione Nicola del Roscio) and Eleonora Di Erasmo herself. This section literally brings to life archive’s material by bringing into the spotlight musicians, poets, writers, visual artists, choreographers, and filmmakers who were inspired by Cy Twombly, by inviting them to perform live at Fondazione Nicola del Roscio in Rome. In Perspective continues this project on online channels in an original way to bring the project into homes and foster awareness of Twombly’s work by offering different angles, “filters, new points of view from which to observe the works,” as Eleonora explains. The particular structure of this section holds some very original surprises, such as the exclusive broadcast of some events held in the beautiful spaces of Fondazione Nicola del Roscio in Rome. We therefore leave you ‘listening’ to Eleonora Di Erasmo’s words and encourage you to visit Cy Twombly’s website as well as the In Perspective section and stay updated on its activities.
Elena Giulia Rossi: First of all, please can you tell us about the origins of In Perspective, the special section of the Foundation’s website that highlights the many musicians, poets, writers, visual artists, choreographers and directors who have been inspired and influenced by Cy Twombly’s artistic research in their creative process and works?
Eleonora Di Erasmo: The idea for In Perspective came about at the same time as the work on revamping the Cy Twombly Foundation website, particularly while we were busy organising the second edition of Un/veiled. This project began in an initial phase as archival research, carried out in the Italian offices of the Cy Twombly Foundation, led by Nicola Del Roscio. We first started collecting poetic works dedicated to the artist, and then delved deeper into music and dance. As we continued with our research, we realised that numerous artists of different generations and from different artistic fields had produced works which were inspired and influenced by Cy Twombly’s artistic research, confirming how the artist’s work was still relevant and perceived as alive in the present day.
Hence the spontaneous need to share this research with the public and to invite some of the artists from this archive to showcase their creations inspired by Twombly’s work, in the spaces at the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio in Rome.
Somehow, the eyes of the artists involved and their works become filters, new points of view from which the artist’s works could be observed. The Foundation’s new website aims to do exactly that. It is developed not only as a scientific tool through the Biography, Chronology, Artworks, Exhibitions and Bibliography sections that provide detailed information about the artist’s life, works and publications, but together with the web designer Wolfram Wiedner, we have decided to make the website a dynamic entity that evolves over time through textual and multimedia content. This can give the visitor an unusual perspective on Cy Twombly’s work and convey a contemporary message, linked not only to the artist’s research but also to the work carried out by the Foundation through its numerous activities, exhibitions, publications and support for scholars and researchers, to name but a few. The In Perspective section was therefore created as the natural extension of a project that the Foundation has been working on for almost four years now. It is a container in which to deepen our knowledge of the artist’s work through the eyes of contemporary artists and scholars, to create connections by involving journalists, art historians and critics. It is a virtual space where words, images and sounds become storytellers that narrate the artist in ever different ways.
Can you say a few words about how important multidisciplinary research has been for Twombly?
Studies devoted to Cy Twombly most often talk about his love for classical and modern poetry, classical history, and mythology. There is a tendency to focus somewhat on his interest in the past and, while this is central to his work, I believe it is not the only aspect that characterises it.
Cy Twombly was also a man of his time, which was a historic period of great social and economic changes and dramatic events, as well as great achievements for mankind, which the artist decoded through his knowledge of history and past culture, transfiguring these in his works through his unique abstract language. In 1951, he attended the summer and winter semesters at Black Mountain College in North Carolina and came into contact with artists from different fields, such as the musician John Cage and the choreographer Merce Cunningham. He would later become acquainted with another key composer in the Post-Avant-garde scene, Morton Feldman. He had no collaborations with musicians or choreographers, but his contact with some of them, particularly his knowledge of the music of his time, has left traces in some of his works.
As Nicola Del Roscio writes in the introduction to volume 5 of Cy Twombly. Drawings. Cat. Rais. Vol. 5, 1970-1971, in 1953, the artist was impressed by Le Voile d’Orphée by composer Pierre Henry, which he listened to on the radio. It opens with a recording of the manipulated sound of a torn piece of cloth, symbolising the dramatic death of Orpheus, ripped to pieces by the Bacchantes.
That initial sound that seems to expand infinitely would later inspire Twombly in the creation of his paintings Treatise on The Veil (1968) and Treatise on the Veil [Second Version], 1970. The artist visually restores the image of continuity created by that sound suspended in space through a series of continuous lines, portions of interrupted lines and numerical inscriptions, “a timeline without time”, to quote the artist’s words, which seem to evoke the scores of the post-war musical avant-garde. I therefore believe that, in Twombly’s works, the past can also be seen as a filter through which to explain the present. It combines suggestions arising not only from the reading of classical and modern texts, but also from the cultural ferment contemporary to the artist.
The Devendra Banhart. Total Pink Cosmos in Square White Cloud exhibition (May 25th – July 5th, 2024), part of the second edition of Un/veiled. Inside the creative process (after Cy Twombly), closed in July. Can you tell us how this project came about and how it relates to the In Perspective section?
The Un/veiled project was developed in two editions. In the first edition Un/veiled. Cy Twombly, Music, Inspirations (2022), we focused on the concept of inspiration and concentrated on the field of music by inviting two musicians, Eraldo Bernocchi and Isabella Summers, and paying homage to two fundamental figures in the musical field, Pierre Henry, who inspired Cy Twombly for his series of paintings Treatise on the Veil, and Harold Budd. In the second edition Un/veiled. Inside the creative process (after Cy Twombly) (2024), we wanted to go a step further and investigate how the invited artists, poets and researchers were influenced by Twombly’s work in their own creative process. Hence the choice to range from the field of music, to dance and poetry, starting with a piece by Morton Feldman, Triadic Memories (1981), which became the theme of the second edition.
The exhibition Devendra Banhart. Total Pink Cosmos in Square White Cloud accompanied the programme of events for its entire duration. The artist has stated on several occasions that he was strongly influenced by the work of Cy Twombly throughout his career. For this reason, we decided to retrace in the exhibition the various phases and aspects of Banhart’s artistic research in which the visitor could sense the underlying connections with the work of Cy Twombly. This was evident from the signs and lines of the pencil and ink drawings Haru (2014) that seem to recall Twombly’s early experiments on paper in the 1950s, to the almost obsessive repetition of the same subject in the Sphinx Interiors (2014). These seem to refer to some of the artist’s works that were produced in series, differing only in their almost imperceptible details.
Some of the episodes of In Perspective, such as the ones just published dedicated to Devendra Banhart and jazz pianist Myra Melford, were therefore designed as spaces for in-depth examination of the works of these artists involved in the two editions of Un/veiled. They examine the reasons that link them in different ways to Cy Twombly’s work through the publication of interviews accompanied by images and videos of the performances that took place at the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio.
This section of the website periodically has replays of performances that took place at the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio as part of Un/veiled. The videos are available for a certain period. Can you tell us how the decision came about to make videos available for a certain period of time?
The performance videos of the artists who took part in Un/veiled are available for 48 hours. When reading the interviews, I’d like the visitor to have a visual and auditory experience of what he or she is reading with the help of the videos. Once removed, the videos are replaced by the corresponding teasers that continue to fulfil the same function, adding useful details to explain what was said in the interviews.
It is therefore about visual experiences, but not just those. One example is the recent Myra Melford episode. In this case, Melford was interviewed by musicologist Delia Casadei. During the interview, the musician and composer played some very short musical examples on the piano, going on to explain the different ways in which some of Twombly’s best-known works come alive in his compositions through the sound of the piano and the accompanying movement. I immediately agreed with Delia Casadei’s idea of including musical examples within the interview. They represent another way of experiencing the work and understanding the relationship between Twombly’s research and that of the artist interviewed by using a different sensory capacity.
It seems to me that there is a very precise documentation project for each exhibition that includes interviews with the artists, such as the one with Devendra Banhart published in the catalogue and relaunched in the In Perspective section, as well as documents from Twombly’s creative life. Can you tell us about the layout of the website and how you designed the architecture for document navigation?
As I explained earlier, the website is designed as a dynamic entity that lives in the present through the News section and the In Perspective section with its constantly evolving content. We have also tried to create connections between certain sections to allow the visitor to navigate easily and intuitively around the website and to delve into the aspects of the artist that interest them most. For instance, within the Chronology section, clicking on the images of the works takes you to the work in question in the Artworks section, which gathers information on a selection of the artist’s works and the corresponding publication data in the Catalogue Raisonnés. An important piece of work we are currently completing is the Bibliography section, which will contain descriptions for each individual publication by researcher and art historian Jamie Danis. It will be an important tool for students and researchers, as the descriptions not only provide a comprehensive overview of the content covered in each publication, but also suggest other titles where thematic links can be found.
The inclusion of such content and the publication of previously unseen documents, such as the statement Cy Twombly submitted in 1952 to apply for a scholarship at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which is part of the first episode of In Perspective, represent a fundamental aspect of the work conceived for the website. Going beyond the publications dedicated to the artist, it becomes an additional scientific support and consultation tool for scholars and researchers. In this case, the short documentary Cy Twombly: A Journey to Morocco (directed by: Andrea Bettinetti, Good Day Films, 2023), which is dedicated to Cy Twombly’s journey to Morocco thanks to this last grant, will remain permanently on the website, not only as a tool for scholars to learn more about the subject, but also as a gift for the community.
Can you tell us about any upcoming events on the website?
Of course. For the fourth episode to be launched on 16th October, we’ll be including the Un/veiled. Inside the creative process (after Cy Twombly) short documentary film, directed by Andrea Bettinetti and produced by Good Day Films during the course of the second edition. It will retrace the creation of the Un/veiled project and the development of the two editions through previously unseen back-stage images and interviews with the artists involved. Starting in November, we’ll continue to provide more information about the events that are part of the second edition. We’ll be dedicating space to the choreographer Michèle Murray and her work Wilder Shores (2020) re-proposed at the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio by her company PLAY. In the following months, we’ll also be relaunching the conversation between the poet Dean Rader and the researcher Carlos Peris, authors of two books dedicated to the work of Cy Twombly. There will also be a concert by Eraldo Bernocchi and Rita Marcotulli who, at the close of the second edition, performed by reinterpreting two pieces that musician Harold Budd dedicated to Cy Twombly, Mars and the Artist (after Cy Twombly) (2011) and Veil of Orpheus (Cy Twombly’s) (2012).
Cy Twombly Foundation | Un/veiled. Fondazione Nicola del Roscio
Upcoming online events. Cy Twombly’s website: In Perspective
Oct. 16 – fourth episode devoted to the short documentary film dedicated to the two editions of Un/veiled: Un/veiled. Inside the creative process (after Cy Twombly): directed by Andrea Bettinetti and produced by Good Day Films, Cy Twombly Foundation and Nicola Del Roscio Foundation). It will remain permanently on our site as will the short documentary on Cy Twombly’s trip to Morocco contained in the first episode
Mid-November – fifth episode devoted to choreography by Michèle Murray/PLAY, Wilder Shores (2020) Video performance screening at the Nicola Del Roscio Foundation for 48 hours and interview with the choreographer
Mid-December – sixth episode devoted to conversation by Dean Rader and Carlos Peris about their books dedicated to Cy Twombly: Dean Rader, Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly (2023) Carlos Peris, From State of Mind to the Tangible. The Photographic Cosmos of Cy Twombly (2022) Video conversation screening at the Nicola Del Roscio Foundation that will remain permanently and interview with the authors
Mid-January – seventh episode dedicated to the concert by Eraldo Bernocchi and Rita Marcotulli Video performance screening at the Nicola Del Roscio Foundation for 48 hours and interview with the musicians
In Perspective
images: (cover 1) Pierre Henry concert, «Un/veiled. Cy Twombly, Music, Inspirations», Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, Rome. Courtesy Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, ph. Valerio Polici (2-3) Courtesy Cy Twombly Foundation. Website by Wiedner Studio (4) Devendra Banhart in concert, «Un/veiled. Inside the creative process (after Cy Twombly)», Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, Rome. Ph. Livio Sapio (5) Devendra Banhart. Total Pink Cosmos in Square White Cloud. Veduta Devendra Banhart, «Sphinx Interiors», 2014, Artworks: Courtesy the artist and Galleria Mazzoli. Ph. Tiziano Ercoli & Riccardo Giancola (6) Eraldo Bernocchi, «Un/veiled. Cy Twombly, Music, Inspirations», Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, Rome. Courtesy Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, ph. Valerio Polici (7) PLAY/Michèle Murray, «Wilder Shores, Un/veiled. Inside the creative process (after Cy Twombly)», Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, Rome. Ph. Livio Sapio