Hi, Wednesday. It's a rainy Summer day in Miami and it's reminding me of those July mornings in the Northeast when I was a little girl, and had to go to camp in the rain, hunkered down in a cabin on dreary afternoons with some Elmer's Glue, some glitter, and construction paper. (That doesn't sound so bad actually...)
In any event, I loved those arts and crafts days back then- informed my lifelong interest in art. I've already talked about my love for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, one of my favorite museums of all time. When I heard about Cy Twombly's passing yesterday, I immediately recalled his stellar permanent installation "Fifty Days at Ilium", taken from Homer's poem, at said museum. I remember as a girl loving these enormous scrawlish masterpiece, inspired by mythology and an epic sense of scale. It was from those works that I wanted to study mythology, incessantly, which I did as a girl. What I now realize as a more seasoned member of the human race is that Twombly's works were early demonstrations of graffiti- think of the Lascaux cave drawings and think of Cy and his combination of words and forms, and you can easily see the roots of said movement. A contemporary of Jasper Johns and Rauschenberg, Twombly served time as a cryptologist in the army- cryptology, according to Wikipedia, is the practice and study of hiding information. Interesting gig for an artist, non?
Cause that's what's up this scribble of a Wednesday in the MIA. RIP Mr. Twombly and thanks for the inspiration. XO