Twombly: Apollonian and/or Dionysian? In this essay I intend to consider a number of paintings by Cy Twombly. My readings of these paintings will make use of two opposing critical concepts, namely the Apollonian and the Dionysian. These concepts have been used by a number of philosophers and writers, principally Frederich Nietzsche. Nietzsche first used them in his work on Greek drama, The Birth of Tragedy [1872]. Nietzsches use of the concepts went beyond the bounds of his literary analysis of the Greek tragedians since he was also exploring the presence of the Apollonian and the Dionysian in the cultural psyche of Ancient Greece. Furthermore, Nietzsche saw the Apollonian and the Dionysian as presences within the human psyche and therefore as important for his own age as for Ancient Greece. Each of these terms can be further defined by way of their characteristic traits. That which can be said to be Apollonian embodies a rational, logically ordered character. It values thought and reason above feeling and instinct. It values that which has defined itself into its own individuality and, as such, has given itself some defining form. In the process of seeking individuation, of defining itself, the Apollonian has separated itself out of a relatively undifferentiated state. The Dionysian, on the other hand, has its sources in feeling, in passion and in instinct. It is willing to dissolve itself away into something older and more primitive. It seeks union with what Nietzsche calls the Primordial Unity of all things. Whilst the Apollonian draws its inspiration from culture and cultural artefacts and seeks a refinement of civilisation, that which is Dionysian wants to step outside of that which is cultivated as it seeks older and darker sources in wild, untamed nature. For Nietzsche the art forms that best embodied the Apollonian were sculpture and painting; whilst the spirit of things Dionysian was best captured in music.

Twombly in his association with the abstract expressionist has seemed somewhat of an outsider of that group. Whereas the work of Kline, Dekooning and Pollock was always of a character of wholeness, and a distinct link to European pictorial culture, with allusions to space or, in the case of De Kooning, (David Sylvester Tate: The Art Magazine 1995 Autumn Ed) parts of the body and natural objects etc. Twombly's defining pictures of the mid 50s is quite different in character. Space, if he creates it is shallow, his marks are microcosm of the creative thrust, and a framing of action and time rather than space or pictorial allusions. This is in the character of the Dionysian man, who's delight is in action and dance. In Twombly's case the dance of the line and its erratic and insatiable need to explore.

De Kooning - Gotham News

Nietzsches position for the artist that he sets out in The Gay

Science is for him to be a 'teacher of Adults' Twombly in his use of free marks smears and blotches evokes the free play and delight of children in the stuff of the world, something which adults perhaps need to be taught by children. In this way Towmbly is both teacher and child, and both Apollonian and Dionysian. Particularly in the Ferragosto series of the early 60s there is this intimation of love for everything no matter how foul or terrible it may be, the colour and smears which seem to speak of bodily secretions are symbolic of this I think. The title Ferragosto comes from an Italian holiday which contains an interesting duality in of itself. In modern times under Roman Catholicism it is a Holy Day Of Obligation to commemorate the Assumption of the Blessed Vigin Marythe real physical elevation of her sinless soul and incorrupt body into Heaven, and yet at the under the Roman Empire it was a day of tribute to Diana goddess of fertility and ripening. This speaks of ascetic denial and natural fecundity. The whiteness of the canvas creates that illusion which makes the smears and effacement of it all the more joyous.

Cy Twombly - Ferregusto VI

Nietzsches development of the Dionysian man in The Gay Science speaks of Amour Fati or 'love of fate' as a method to escape the chains of Apollonian illusion which is just this a love of everything, which free from a need for a metaphysical comfort from the terrors of life. We can also see this characteristic in the Untitled works of 1954, Twombly is uses colour as an expression of joy in the face of the whiteness of the pages. Twombly talks about whiteness in his works: 'The reality of whiness may exisit in the duality of sensation (as the multiple anxiety of desire and fear) Whiteness can be the classic state of the intellect, or a neoromantic area of remembrance or as the symbolic whiteness of Mallarme. The exact implication may never be analysed, but in

that it persists as the landscape of my actions, it must imply more than selection. One is a reflection of meaning. So that the action must continually bear out the realization of existence. Therefore the act is the primary sensation' (Cy Twombly: A retrospective Kirk Varnedoe) This quote I feel represents the dichotomy of feeling and intellect, in the Untitled works we have free looping lines which are pure gesture, with primary colour crayons which loop into a sort of free calligraphy though with feeling interrupting the forming of proper letters which seems to me an important aspect of the formation of of the floating lines, Twombly is floating somewhere between intellect and pure feeling. The interposing of black and erasure of lines represents an interpolation of the Apollonian.

I have argued that an especially Dionysian character can be found in Twomblys colour pencil and crayon works of 1954 which are known as Untitled [see Cy Twombly: Fifty Years of Work on Paper ed. J. Sylvester (Schirmer/Mosel 2003) and in the Ferragosto sequence [numbered I to V] of 1961. However, in the Hero and Leandro sequence of 1981-4, I find an interesting balancing of Apollonian and Dionysian principles. This may, in part, be because the myth of Hero and Leander [Twombly uses the Italian form of Leander] itself embodies the two opposing principles. In the myth Hero is a virgin priestess of Aphrodite and so, in her vowed sexual abstinence, she is Apollonian. She lives in a tower in Sestos which is on the coast of the Hellespont. Leander is a young man from Abydos which is on the other side of the Hellespont. The couple meet and fall in love. Sexual love and passion must always tend to be Dionysian rather than Apollonian. This is especially so in this case, since Hero should obey the [Apollonian] rules of her order as a virgin priestess. The couple

begin a secret affair which involves Leander swimming across the Hellespont each night and returning at dawn. To guide Leander, Hero used to put a light in the window of her tower. One stormy, wintry night, Heros light was blown out and without this guide Leander was drowned in the turbulent sea this turbulent sea embodies their passion, a passion whose transgressive, nonApollonian, character was fated to end in tragedy. Next morning when Hero finds that Leander has drowned she leaps out of the tower and commits suicide. The conflict between the Apollonian and the Dionysian has produced a double tragedy. Twomblys treatment of this story spans four paintings, which he calls Hero and Leandro Parts I, II, III and IV. Part I shows what is recognisable as a stormy sea. To the left of the centre of this painting a circular relatively dense cluster of curling waves seems to embody the drowning Leandro. Pencilled in to the right of the centre Twombly has written Leandro. The painting can be divided into two by means of a diagonal line running from the top left hand corner down to the bottom right hand corner. In the top right hand corner we find white and cream and faint green. This area seems to represent hazy air above the sea and beyond that one imagines sky. It forms a stark contrast with the turbulent sea in the lower half of the painting. The creamy, faintly green colours appear again in Parts II & III where they become the dominant tone. Like Part I, Part II can be similarly divided into two by means of a diagonal line from the top left-hand corner to the bottom right-hand corner but now a much calmer sea occupies the left-hand half whilst similarly hazy air occupies the right-hand half. It should also be said that in each of the Parts the sea descends along a diagonal running from the left to a lower point on the right. This descent is steep with the stormy sea of Part I but increasingly less steep in Parts II & III. With Part III the subject no longer yields to a division into sea and air with sea to the left and air to the right. Now it is difficult to distinguish sea from air though there is still a quality of wave-like, sea motion running

diagonally from slightly higher on the left to the right. This melding of sea and air, this imparting throughout of creamy, hazy luminosity makes a unity of the whole canvas. In Part IV a parchment-like cream forms the background to a pencil written quote from Keatss poem On a Leander Gem. The quoted line is the last of the poem and it is: Hes gone; up bubbles all his amorous breath. Twomblys portrait=aligned canvas squeezes the writing space in such a way that the line can not be written out along the same line and must be broken into three: Hes gone/up bubbles/all his amorous breath. The very fact that Twombly has used a literary source1, has used the word, is itself rather Apollonian. Furthermore, Twombly, now painting at some distance from the New York school of Abstract Expressionism with which he was associated earlier in his career, employs a kind of expressionistic naturalism in this sequence, a sequence that presents a relatively clear and ordered narrative form. By expressionistic naturalism I mean that the paintings especially Parts I and II are clearly enough depictions of a turbulent sea. This move to definition through naturalistic form and an ordered narrative is Apollonian. Twombly adds a further defining feature to Part I by writing in pencil the name Leandro where the sea seems to give way to sky-obscuring spume and haze.Yet at the same time, this sea is turbulent, it rears and curls in mountainous waves; it dissolves Leander into a tangled, convulsive knot of overwhelmed being. Turbulent seas suggesting passion, wild nature, the dissolution of an individual into the elements: these are Dionysian characteristics.

1

Various poets from Classical to Modern times have written poems based on the myth. In the last of Hero and Leandro sequence, Twombly makes use of the last lines of Keatss sonnet On a Picture of Leander

Cy Twombly - Hero and Leandro part 1

In terms of his methodology Twombly late era works have more of an Apollonian character as in Hero and Leandro whilst illuminating and energizing them with Dionysian characteristics, in the last of this sequence Twombly uses impressionistic strokes characteristic of Monet and it is interesting to note that some of latest paintings have been pretty purely expressionistic paintings of water and light and concerned with expression of naturalistic phenomena. In the Untitled works of the mid 50s that I have examined are of the act, and the line with sensual colour which speaks of abandon and joy, he uses red yellow and green in these two pieces, the colours the child and basic formation of nature. These a recording of the microcosm the creative act untamed and are largely Dionysian in character. In Ferragosto I think an interesting duality is evoked of the whiteness which represents the Apollonian character, there are allusions to pictorial themes largely to those of the effacement of walls and obscene graffiti. In Ferragosto V the most thickly encrusted canvas we get phalluses and testes, along with smears of blood red and suggestions of marbled ejactulate. The colour is highy suggestive and symbolic, the whiteness also eludes to graffti and effacement, in deed the paintings seem to be marshelling of

the artists powers, to interject his very body onto that whiteness. (of desire and fear) Whilst relying on its illusion of whiteness ( as no canvas is pure white or perfectly smooth etc.) and purity to sustain the joy in effacement and intoxication of the act. In this sense the Dionysian act is sustained by the Apollonian illusion, which is characteristic of Twombly's finest work I feel.

Bibliography Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons ed. N. Serota [Tate 2008] Cy Twombly Fifty Years of Works on Paper ed. J. Sylvester [Schirmer/Mosel 2008] David Sylvester: On Modern Art Kirk Varnedoe Cy Twombly: A retrospective Roland Barthes Non Multa sed Multum Julian Young Nietzsche's philosophy of art Friedrich Nietzsche The Birth of Tragedy