Cy Twombly, Treatise on the Veil, 1970
A breathtaking exploration of one of Twombly’s largest paintings, the second version of his Treatise on the Veil.
One of the most important American postwar artists, Cy Twombly (1928–2011) engaged with mythological and poetic source material, setting him apart from other artists of his generation. In 1970, Twombly revisited his 1968 painting Treatise on the Veil and, in a short period of focused creativity, produced a painting—Treatise on the Veil (Second Version)—on a single, 33-foot canvas along with more than a dozen related drawings.
This handsomely produced oversize book features three essays that examine these works in relation to Twombly’s oeuvre, contemporaneous explorations of time, the Orpheus myth, and a musical composition that Twombly cited as an influence. Large images and details bring us in close to Twombly’s magnificent meditation on time and space.