Cy Twombly’s seasons, in the shadow of Renoir

The iconographical analysis of Four seasons (1993), by the contemporary artist Edwin Parker “Cy” Twombly (Cy Twombly, 1928 – 2011) must be understood considering the importance of one of the most famous impressionist painters: Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 - 1919). La vague (1879) and Paysage bords de Seine (1879) are two oil on canvas where Renoir prints the feeling of captivating the ephemeral through the colour and the movement of light. Four seasons has its roots in American lyrical abstraction. The need of making a portrait of lightness, through a creation where image and text are together, represents the evolution of Renoir’s work in contemporary art. As an impressionist artist, Renoir describes beauty as the reflection of the harmony of the world, as such as a bridge between aesthetic and emotional education. With this proposal, Cy Twombly sublimates the idea of beauty in contemporary art.

Gesto Furtivo

The article was part of the thesis Indelible Horizon, a research in which writing, and its fables are confused with the materiality of artistic practice. This article-essay seeks to initiate a reflection on the act of drawing and its gesture, having as a background the language of the works of Cy Twombly and the film “Cave of forgotten dreams” by Werner Herzg. Authors such as Badiou, Barthes, Blanchot are interlocutors in this writing.

Les saisons de Cy Twombly, à la lumière de Renoir

Cet article porte sur l’analyse iconographique de Four seasons (1993), par l’artiste contemporain Edwin Parker “Cy Twombly” (Cy Twombly, 1928 – 2011), à la lumière de deux créations du maître impressionniste Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1845 – 1919). La vague (1879) et Paysage bords de Seine (1879) sont deux œuvres où Renoir imprime un sceau qui capte l’éphémère à travers la couleur, le mouvement de la lumière et le pleinairisme. Four seasons est une œuvre qui ne peut pas être comprise comme création contemporaine sans étudier l’empreinte de Renoir dans l’abstraction lyrique américaine ̶ un sceau visible dans la technique, l’usage de la couleur, la thématique et le message de la création. Le besoin de saisir l’harmonie, à travers une création dans laquelle l’image et le texte se mêlent, représente l’évolution de la même œuvre de Renoir dans la contemporanéité : une création où le message unit image et langage, voire un poème visuel.

Barthes, the Desire to Write, and the Prevision of the Work

This chapter explores the connections between Le Lexique de l’auteur (the seminar of 1973–4 in which Barthes reflects on the genesis of the text that will become Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes), La Préparation du roman (his last Collège de France lecture course of 1978–80), and critical essays he wrote in the mid- and late 1970s on scription, the ductus, and writing as gesture (from an anthropological point of view, as in the posthumously published Variations sur l’écriture, and within the paintings of Bernard Réquichot and Cy Twombly). The main focus will be on Barthes’s reflection, across the two seminars, on the idea of the virtual work: his exploration of the modalities of literary genesis in the grammatical mood of the ‘as if’, and his development of ways of modelling literary genesis through the concept of the œuvre-maquette. This bringing together of modelling, genesis, and writing as process, placed in relation to the desire to write as a significant dimension of actual writing, is one of the strikingly original aspects of Barthes’s 1970s thought. It is one that the posthumous publication of the seminars and lectures allows us to understand.