Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu served as inspiration for Cy Twombly as he composed his exhibitions for Avignon and Arles. A kind of retrospective, looking back on the early days of learning, as if nostalgically filtering out the happy moments and milestones. A glimpse of a life and work to which he associated friends and artists. A vast self-portrait as well, drawn from beyond the subconscious. A premonition! Cy Twombly knew he was ill. He wanted these exhibitions that, retrospectively, can be read like testaments.

Cy Twombly died in Rome on July 5, 2011, in Italy, where he had been living for more than 50 years. He was 83.
He was the last survivor of the generation of American artists that had dominated the international marketplace. They included Franz Kline, John Cage, Jasper Johns or Robert Rauschenberg. He was born in Lexington, Virginia on April 25, 1928.

An invited guest of the Lambert Foundation in 2007, he built "Blooming", a monumental exhibition featuring peonies. Out of his longstanding friendship with Yvon Lambert, he wanted to relive the experience both as invited guest and co-curator of the exhibition. It is no surprise, despite his international notoriety as a sculptor and painter, that he chose to highlight his work as a photographer. At the Lambert Foundation in Avignon, the work on display dates back to his years at Black Mountain College where he was a student alongside John Cage and Franz Kline. His Italian works with landscapes, still lives and workshop pictures follow. He uses light and time in reference to Édouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard and Edgar Degas, giving meaning to the exhibition’s title "Le temps retrouvé" in reference to Proust.
A creation he chose to confront with the works of other photographers that were both friends and references.

As can be witnessed by the current exhibition under way at the Pompidou Museum in Paris (see La Lettre de la Photographie dated 30 June 2011) where Twombly refers to sculptor Constantin Brancusi for his exploration of time and light. He also refers to the work of Jacques-Henri Lartigue, immortalizing a nostalgic time or one that seems endless, like Hiroshi Sugimoto’s marine work. A reference prefiguring the repetition of Sol LeWitt and Ed Ruscha’s work.
Among the American artists honored for their influence, their friendship, or both, Diane Arbus, Louise Lawler, Cindy Sherman or Sally Mann.

In Arles, Cy Twombly worked as curator, selecting works by Douglas Gordon and Miquel Barcelo for the Chapelle du Méjan.
For Éric Mézil, author of the exhibition catalog, "The starting point was the video installation "24 Hours Psycho", filmed over one full day”. This installation is presented alongside pictures of burning celebrities interspersed with spectators’ own faces appearing in a set of mirrors.

Miquel Barceló, born in Majorca on January 8, 1957, is not a photographer. His contribution consists of portraits of albino Africans painted in bleach. For this exhibition, and for Cy Twombly, Barceló painted blind, without seeing the final result. “Portraits painted on black linen canvas, chemically reacting to the bleach, revealing images of known or unknown faces.”
The art of Rembrandt, Goya, Eugène Carrière is present, in a darkness reminiscent of the flames and ashes of Douglas Gordon’s enigmatic portraits.”

Bernard Perrine
Bernard.Perrine1@orange.fr

Rencontres d’Arles
July 4th to September 4th 2011

Le temps retrouvé, Cy Twombly photographer, Friends and Others
Collection Lambert en Avignon
5 rue Violette

Cy Twombly, Miquel Barcelo, Douglas Gordon
Le Méjan

Le temps retrouvé
Cy Twombly photographe & artistes invités
Introduction and notes by Éric Mézil
Textes by Nicholas Cullinan, Don DeLillo et Anne-Marie Garrat
Catalogue en 2 volumes
Actes Sud 384 pages 220x228mm