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]. Nietzsche’s 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

Nietzsche’s 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 Mary—the
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
Nietzsche’s 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 neo-

romantic 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 Twombly’s 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, Hero’s 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, non-
Apollonian, 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.

Twombly’s 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 Keats’s poem On a Leander Gem. The quoted line is
the last of the poem and it is: He’s gone; up bubbles all his
amorous breath. Twombly’s 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: He’s 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 Keats’s 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