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Something unrecognizable and distorted within me quivered.
Sensory networks lit up; a new barometer fluctuated.
It was abstract yet explicitly erotic.
I was in voluptuous rut.
But something like gravitas and immensity was preponderant within me, too.
A silent sonorous world opened.
Right now there are two spectacular Cy Twombly shows at Larry Gagosian Gallery.
(None of the work is said to be for sale, so … thank you, Larry.)
Uptown are the stately so-called solar-barges of the sun the ten-part painting cycle from 2000 titled Coronation of Sesostris.
For whatever reason, Twombly changed the third painting, and I liked it more before he did.)
Sesostrisis ostensibly based on the stories of three 12th-dynasty Egyptian pharaohs by that name.
But just the arcane Egyptian word conjures obscure twinges, the physiological effect we feel when gazing at hieroglyphics.
The 50-year concatenation that led to all this is on view in the equally unmissable 21st Street show.
In almost 100 works dating from 1951 to 2008, it gives an account of Twomblys ever-changing drawing methods.
This huge show begins with a table laid out with a series of small notebook pages from 1951.
Naumachia is an ancient Greek word that means naval battle.
In this genesis moment he took Twomblys speed of history and amped it up to the speed of life.
I fancy young artists coming to this show and extending that arc.
Im not going to delve into the encyclopedic trove of aesthetic possibilities implied in all these drawings.
Let Twomblys eroticism, formalism, and visceral brio reach you.
you could see them in any order.
Theres a real sense of trying to hold on to life, love or memory.
The penultimate canvas is a black-outlined lone boat and the phrase Leaving Paphos ringed with waves.
Paphos is located on Cyprus, also known as the Island of Love, the supposed birthplace of Aphrodite.
The cycle transmutes into some sort of final farewell.
The second canvas finds the words Solar barge of Sesostris hovering over an image of a double sun.
The cycle is complete.
In Beauty it is finished: Drawings 19512008 is at Gagosians 522 West 21st Street location through April 25.
