Rauschenberg + Twombly
Cy Twombly in the 1950s, photographed by Robert Rauschenberg. All images on this page from Secretforts.
So Cy Twombly passed away two days ago, at the ripe ol’ age of 83.
Most obituaries, including the one published by The New York Times, mention his personal life only in passing, and when they do, it’s mostly to note his marriage to the Italian aristocrat Tatiana Franchetti, and/or his “longtime companion”, one Nicola Del Roscio.*
Robert Rauschenberg makes an appearance only as a timely connection:
He met Rauschenberg, a fellow student at the league, during his second semester, and Rauschenberg later persuaded Mr. Twombly to enroll at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, which had become a crucible for the American avant-garde, with John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Ray Johnson, Dorothea Rockburne and John Chamberlain among its faculty and students. Mr. Twombly, who studied with Ben Shahn, stayed at the college only briefly and was a bit of an outsider even then. As he told Mr. Serota: “I was always doing my own thing. I always wondered why there are books with photographs of all the artists of that period and I was only in one! I thought: ‘Where was I?’
* Regarding Del Roscio, a reader wrote in with this lil’ gem: “Writer and editor Nicola Del Roscio, who became Twombly’s studio assistant in the late 1960s, I believe, is a man, not a woman, though the first name might confuse some.” Now we know. Muchos gracias !
Twombly in the ’50s, photographed by Rauschenberg.
The two men though, at that point in their respective lives, were something more than mere “fellow student”s.
No one seems to be interested in talking about it … the relationship, that is, not Twombly’s preference for men.
Granted, Rauschenberg’s influence in Twombly’s life may have been fleeting, and vice versa — he was succeeded in Rauschenberg’s affections by Jasper Johns, who proved to a be far more enduring legacy both artistically and romantically.
Nonetheless, I’m curious, and a Google search turned up an essay by art historian and queer studies guru Jonathan Katz, titled “Lovers and Divers: Interpictorial Dialog in the Work of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.” The relevant section on Twombly is reproduced below – and he remains a prelude to the main plot twist that is Johns’ arrival in Rauschenberg’s life – but you can read it in full here.
Elsewhere, I’ve also written a short piece on the Rauschenberg-Johns partnership, apropos of the former’s Bed, from 1955.
Twombly in his Fulton Street Studio in 1954, photographed by Robert Rauschenberg.
Katz writes:
For example, in his White Paintings, he proffers enduringly silent images in what was certainly the most cacophonous period of American art, a silence that must be understood in the context of Jackson Pollock’s rage, de Kooning’s slashes and Kline’s ponderous portents. These all white paintings seem to be antipodal to Abstract Expressionism, about the size and scale of a Pollock, but so without gesture or incident of any kind that Rauschenberg decreed that they could be painted by others using house paint and a roller. The Abstract Expressionist’s painters were, after all, his contemporaries, even colleagues. Rauschenberg knew them, and admired their work. And he seems to have tried to make an art that was in many respects the exact opposite of theirs. In a letter to Betty Parson, Rauschenberg attempted to convince his one-time dealer to show the White Paintings by arguing, “It is completely irrelevant that I am making them – Today is their creator” thereby once again refusing authorial responsibility and inverting the Abstract Expressionist equation of self and painting.
But there is one image produced during this early period in Rauschenberg’s career that breaks this pattern of negation and refusal. Indeed, it seems almost traditionally expressive, although “written” in a kind of code. Called Should Love Come First? And now destroyed, it was painted in 1951 and exhibited at Rauschenberg’s first one person show at the Betty Parson’s gallery that same year. Should Love Come First? Draws its title from a collaged fragment of a magazine that appears in the upper left corner and reads, “my problem: Should love come first.” The problematic stated in the title certainly achieves new poignancy considering the fact that the picture was painted shortly after Rauschenberg had met and become involved with Cy Twombly, while still married to his then pregnant wife, Susan Weil. Their son Christopher was born in July that year, while Rauschenberg and Twombly were together at Black Mountain College.
In a letter that winter, Charles Olson, poet and director of the college, wrote to fellow poet Robert Creeley giving us some insight into the situation perhaps inspiring Should Love Come First? And its bittersweet title:
“(I had noticed, a few nights ago, Twombly’s concern for this boy when we were all talking in the study building entrance, and Rauschenberg was sitting too carelessly on the railings over the wall’s edge – that sort of attention, and warning ones takes as feminine, guarding the beloved:) … he is in the black, just now, his marriage smashing, probably over the affair with Twombly, his contract with the gallery not renewed, and – I’d also bet as an added hidden factor – the terrible pressure on him of the clear genius of this lad, Twombly, the success of his year and the total defeat of Bob’s.” 13
Rauschenberg and his wife Susan Weil separated almost as soon as she arrived at Black Mountain with their baby. They divorced the following year.
In addition to the charged question asked in the title Should Love Come First? also contains the imprint of Rauschenberg’s foot contiguous with a male position Arthur Murray waltz diagram – a male/male dance. 14 When, shortly after meeting Rauschenberg, Johns completed a painting entitled Tango (1955), which featured a music box set into the canvas with the titled stenciled across the upper left, could it have been a tribute to his new lover inspired by the precedent of Rauschenberg’s earlier tribute to Twombly? A waltz with Twombly had become a tango with Johns.
And what does it mean that Should Love Come First? was overpainted and transformed into one of the Black Paintings in 1953, following Rauschenberg’s break with Twombly in Europe and subsequent return to the U.S.?
The dense web of autobiographical expression buried in Should Love Come First? was not to be repeated until after Rauschenberg met Johns in the winter of 1953. The cool, largely black and white images he produced until then would be replaced by drips and splashes, drawn hearts and found fabrics. While Rauschenberg largely stopped titling works after the Parsons show in 1951, he resumed after met Johns. Indeed, pre-Johns and post-Johns Rauschenberg seem to be two very different artists.
Twombly in 1952, photographed by Rauschenberg.
