Cy Twombly: Blooming: A Scattering of Blossoms and Other Things, West 21st Street, New York, November 8–December 22, 2007

Installation Views

Cy Twombly: Blooming: A Scattering of Blossoms and Other Things. Installation view, photo by Rob McKeever — Cy Twombly: Blooming: A Scattering of Blossoms and Other Things
Installation view, photo by Rob McKeever

Thumbnail - Cy Twombly: Blooming: A Scattering of Blossoms and Other Things. Installation view, photo by Rob McKeever

Works Exhibited

Cy Twombly Untitled, 2007. Acrylic, wax crayon, pencil on wood, 99 3/16 × 217 5/16 inches (252 × 552cm) — Cy Twombly
*Untitled*, 2007
Acrylic, wax crayon, pencil on wood, 99 3/16 × 217 5/16 inches (252 × 552cm)

About

AH! The Peonies
For which
Kusunoki
Took off his
Armour
—Takarai Kikaku

Gagosian is proud to present an exhibition of recent paintings by Cy Twombly. A Scattering of Blossoms and Other Things was first shown at the Collection Lambert in Avignon, France, earlier this year.

Twombly conceived these vast and exuberant panel paintings with the decor and balanced order of the typical eighteenth-century hôtel particulier in mind. The paintings in this most recent group are in a large horizontal format, each comprising six wooden panels. Across their broad surfaces, ideogrammatic blossoms of vivid crayon and viscous pigment and haikus penciled in the artist’s tremulous scrawl combine and contrast with drips and efflorescent flows of startling, sometimes offbeat mannerist color—burgundy, damask yellow, vermilion, rose, and mint green. Each of these so-called “peony” paintings is a daring invention, combining influences as diverse as French Enlightenment art, furnishings, and architecture; Japonisme; and the élan vital of Twombly’s own original Abstract Expressionism.

Twombly’s previous Bacchus series (2005) seethed with the visceral energies of war. In A Scattering of Blossoms… war cedes to flowers, for which the hero of the famous haiku disarms himself. Peonies are the favored flowers of Japanese aesthetic contemplation, appearing frequently in illustrations, folding screens, and haikus of the Edo period. Once in bloom, they offer a rush of color and texture. Here, their fragile headiness is captured and memorialized in both image and inscription. By adding his own recollections of haikus by the famous seventeenth-century Japanese masters Bashō and Kikaku, Twombly points to the human implications that these full-blown, elegaic paintings hold for an artist in the later stages of his life and career.

Artist

Cy Twombly

Download

Press release (pdf)

Contact

From the Quarterly

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2025

The Spring 2025 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Cy Twombly’s Paesaggio (1986) on the cover.

Cy Twombly by Jenny Saville: To Lift the Veil

Jenny Saville reflects on Cy Twombly’s poetic engagement with the world, with time and tension, and with growth in this excerpt from her Marion Barthelme Lecture, presented at the Menil Collection, Houston, in 2024.

Cy Twombly: Imperfect Paradise

Eleonora Di Erasmo, cocurator of Un/veiled: Cy Twombly, Music, Inspirations, a program of concerts, video screenings, and works by Cy Twombly at the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, Rome, reflects on the resonances and networks of inspiration between the artist and music. The program was the result of an extensive three-year study, done at the behest of Nicola Del Roscio in the Rome and Gaeta offices of the Cy Twombly Foundation, intended to collect, document, and preserve compositions by musicians around the world who have been inspired by Twombly’s work, or to establish an artistic dialogue with them.

Cy Twombly: Making Past Present

In 2020, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, announced their plan for a survey of Cy Twombly’s artwork alongside selections from their permanent ancient Greek and Roman collection. The survey was postponed due to the lockdowns necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic, but was revived in 2022 with a presentation at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles from August 2 through October 30. In 2023, the exhibition will arrive at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The curator for the exhibition, Christine Kondoleon, and Kate Nesin, author of Cy Twombly’s Things (2014) and advisor for the show, speak with Gagosian director Mark Francis about the origin of the exhibition and the aesthetic and poetic resonances that give the show its title: Making Past Present.

Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor

Thierry Greub tracks the literary references in Cy Twombly’s epic painting of 1994.

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2021

The Summer 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Carrie Mae Weems’s The Louvre (2006) on its cover.

Twombly and the Poets

Anne Boyer, the inaugural winner of the Cy Twombly Award in Poetry, composes a poem in response to Twombly’s Aristaeus Mourning the Loss of His Bees (1973) and introduces a portfolio of the painter’s works accompanied by the poems that inspired them.

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2021

The Spring 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Gerhard Richter’s Helen (1963) on its cover.

Rainer Maria Rilke: Duino Elegies

Bobbie Sheng explores the symbiotic relationship between the poet and visual artists of his time and tracks the enduring influence of his poetry on artists working today.

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2020

The Summer 2020 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Joan Jonas’s Mirror Piece 1 (1969) on its cover.

The River Café Cookbook

London’s River Café, a culinary mecca perched on a bend in the River Thames, celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in 2018. To celebrate this milestone and the publication of her cookbook River Café London, cofounder Ruth Rogers sat down with Derek Blasberg to discuss the famed restaurant’s allure.

In Conversation
Sally Mann and Jenny Saville

The two artists discuss being drawn to difficult subjects, the effects of motherhood on their practice, embracing chance, and their shared adoration of Cy Twombly.

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2019

The Fall 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a detail from Sinking (2019) by Nathaniel Mary Quinn on its cover.

Intimate Grandeur: Glenstone Museum

Paul Goldberger tracks the evolution of Mitchell and Emily Rales’s Glenstone Museum in Potomac, Maryland. Set amid 230 acres of pristine landscape and housing a world-class collection of modern and contemporary art, this graceful complex of pavilions, designed by architects Thomas Phifer and Partners, opened to the public in the fall of 2018.

Cy Twombly: In Beauty it is finished

Mark Francis, director of the exhibition Cy Twombly: In Beauty it is finished, Drawings 1951–2008, describes the impetus for this expansive presentation, the source for its title, and details the stories of some of the works on view.

Cy Twombly: Coronation of Sesostris

Cy Twombly’s Coronation of Sesostris (2000) receives a closer look by Gagosian Director, Mark Francis. In this video, he discusses the history of the work, the myths and poetry embedded within it, and considers its lasting impact.

C.T.S.T.

Katharina Grosse reflects on the work of Cy Twombly.

Cy Twombly

Olivier Berggruen and Mary Jacobus spoke about the works in the inaugural exhibition at Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill outpost.

Treatise on the Veil: Cy Twombly at the Morgan

On the occasion of the Morgan Library & Museum’s exhibition of Cy Twombly’s monumental painting Treatise on the Veil (1970) and related drawings, Gagosian director Mark Francis speaks with Isabelle Dervaux, Acquavella Curator of Modern & Contemporary Drawings at the Morgan.