Cy Twombly And The Beauty Of Contamination In Art

This is a replay from Season 1. A single line from Cy Twombly cracks open a huge question for artists: “One must desire the ultimate essence even if it is contaminated.” We sit with that tension between purity and grit and ask what “essence” really means in abstract expressionism, mark making, and the real studio process where rust, dust, scraps, and revisions refuse to stay out of the frame.

From there, we trace why Twombly still feels so magnetic and so misunderstood. He left few interviews and little public persona, which forces viewers to do the work themselves. We talk through Joshua Rivkin’s Here We Go Chalk and the image that won’t let go: the unswept floor. What’s more contaminated than what falls, gets cast aside, and ends up as leftovers? Rivkin treats that debris like a mosaic, and it becomes a clean way to see how Twombly gathers fragments of history, poetry, the body, and the mind, then buries and reveals them through layers.

We also get practical about how art communicates. What does it mean for a painting to “claim the room it inhabits” when the artist is not there to explain it? How much context should titles and statements provide, and when does mystery make the work stronger? If you’ve ever stood in a museum and felt pulled into a surface like an archaeologist, this one puts language to that experience and gives you a better way to look.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome

Exploring Cy Twombly's Essence and Influence

SPEAKER_01 0:09

to Just Make Art. We're excited for today's conversation where we are going to discuss our jumping off point anyway is going to be a quote by Cy Twombly that we pulled from a book called Here we go Chalk. The author's name is Joshua Rivkin. And uh the quote uh goes like this one must desire the ultimate essence even if it is contaminated. I'll read that again. One must desire the ultimate essence even if it is contaminated. So there aren't a lot of quotes by Sai. Not a lot to choose from when it comes to uh things that he wrote or said, because he uh there's just not a lot out there, right? That's uh that's on record. Man of few words. So we're gonna start with these and then uh talk about other things from the book, from the author, and uh and kind of go from there. But the the thing that I like about this, Ty, is uh there's just a lot there, right? And and much like his work, it's it's very open to interpretation, you know, for uh for the viewer. But the part that really sticks out to me initially is just that whole idea of essence. And it's it's a word that you know when you hear it, and and when it you know appears in context, it makes sense. But I wanted to kind of go a little bit deeper on that and just start with uh a definition, uh a working definition of that word. This is Oxford's, which is the one that I like the best, and which I think applies most to this conversation, which is uh essence is the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, especially something abstract that determines its character. And I think it's it's funny that the word abstract appears in the in the in the broad, you know, English definition of the word as well. But I love that whole idea of just you know intrinsic nature of something, which kind of speaks, of course, to Tuambly's work um, you know, as well. But uh yeah, anyway, your thoughts on the quote, and maybe if you want to provide some context for uh who I think is one of your your main influences, isn't that right?

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Absolutely. So I mean you could say there's a uh a pretty fair amount of size essence in my own work and my my past work. So uh for those of you that are not aware of Cy Twambly, um, he's an American painter, sculptor, and photographer, and has left a pretty intense mark uh for neo-expressionists and for a lot of contemporary artists today. Um he had a scholarship in 1950 and 1951 to the Art Students League of New York, where this is kind of his early formation. So imagine uh meeting Robert Roshenberg at that time uh in your young life, who was sharing a studio at the time with Jasper Johns. Um so imagine the magic of hey, I'm I just got a scholarship to this school, and here I am in the studio with Jasper Johns and Robert Roschenberg. So he and Roshenberg were very close. And Roschenberg encouraged him to attend Black Mountain College in North Carolina. That if anybody is familiar with the abstract expressionist movement, Black Mountain College, the professors to the students that studied there had a massive impact on that. And while he was there, he studied with Franz Klein and Robert Motherwell and Ben Sean and became friends with John Cage and all who had heavy influence on each other's work. And then he ended up moving to Rome in 1957, where he lived out the majority of the rest of his life in Rome and Italy. And he's a heavy influence of younger artists of that time, Anselm Kiefer's, Francisco Clemente's, Julian Schnabbles, and even a major influence of John Michel Basquiat. And you've seen his work in films, you've seen it a lot more in the last 20 years than you probably have in history, as he started to make a huge uh impact on contemporary artists. Generally, really large-scale pieces that I just love about him. They're freely scribbled, graffiti-like words, uh, mostly off white and tans and grays and things. And he uses a lot of poets uh within his work. You know, there's a lot of romantic symbolism within his art and his scribbles and his marks. You know, you'll hear the term mark making in the art world a lot. He has got a heavy influence on those that are mark makers. Uh one of my greatest influences, I go down to the Menel Collection in Houston, where the Psy Twombly Museum is on a regular basis, and sit in front of his work. And at most large museums in the world, you will find a Cy Tuambly piece. And so, you know, this quote today, Nathan, so simple a Csai is somebody who did not leave a lot of public persona behind for art historians and people to truly create and tell his story beyond his work. He's a very quiet, introverted private person. He wasn't somebody that would be out in the world constantly speaking and lecturing and doing videos and doing documentary films and these things. It just wasn't his thing at all. And so you really have to decipher who this person is by looking at the work almost, period. And I think Ravkin or Jonathan Rivkin did the best he could do to draw these things out within the story chalk through second-hand information, archives, letters, all these types of things to kind of draw together his opinion of how the artist created. And so this quote just so fits Twambly. One must desire the ultimate essence, even if it is contaminated. Um, and there's two kind of competing things in there as well desire and essence, as well as just the word contaminated, because most people don't desire uh or find an essence in things that are contaminated.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Right. Yeah, that's a um uh one of the one of the quotes I wanted to bring to the table or one of the other references, Confucius. Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it, right? So yeah, it's the uh that contamination part that's uh I mean for for a very uh for a uh a quote with not a lot of words, there's a a lot of depth and a lot of a lot of things to kind of unpack. That desire word's pretty important too. What I'm curious, what do you what do you take from that, right? Like it's there's a there's an element of pursuit, there's an element of of you know longing when I think about obviously the the you know the word desire, but I'm curious what do you take from that and and how do you think by extension it applies to you know his work?

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Well I think I mean gosh, my favorite artists and my favorite artwork, their pieces seem to have that element of contamination, dirt, uh grunge, found objects, things from the studio floor that end up in the work, cement and rust. You know, you look at the Spanish informalists, you look at the artists like Alberto Burry, who just have like cloth and dirt and things that most people would throw away, things that most people would not collect or think were fine art, right, or archival, the Anselm Kiefers using dirt and earth and things that for the majority of the academy, let's say, or the academic art world, right? Those things aren't archival. They're not things that are going to last forever. You shouldn't use that in art. And we're talking more past academy than current academy

Finding Essence in Contaminated Art

SPEAKER_00 7:38

mindset. And so for me, this quilt really means a lot because I have a lot of those things in my work as well. And so I find more essence and I desire more work that has those elements in them than work that is just really clean and shiny and fancy. And that's a personal preference for me. And why do those things speak to me so heavily, I don't know, but they do, right? And that's part of our own personal essence as an artist. Certain things speak to us and call out to us in in ways that are different than others. And why we're made up that way, I have no idea. But for me, I mean, I man, when I get when I'm in a museum and I've got an Anselm Kiefer piece in front of me or an Anthony Tapez piece in front of me, and then I have other work around, I'm drawn to those pieces and I can't leave them. And yet with other work, I can just walk right by it sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

Yeah, there's something to be said for um, and we may not be the best uh pairing to talk about this because we we kind of come from the same school of thought in this regard. So there's not gonna be a real strong, you know, opposing you know viewpoint, but uh that is what the comments section is for, I suppose. Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Argue with us.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Tell us what we tell us what we missed. I'm sure it's a lot. But yeah, I mean, there's something about that, you know, to your point that uh I mean, anything that invites investigation and you know, really considering why is this here, what does it represent? I mean, there's something about finding beauty in everything, or you know, taking something that would otherwise be considered, you know, contaminated and reframing it in a way that causes a viewer to reconsider its essence, right, or its origin to begin with. You know, I think about you know, there's a lot of a lot of descriptions of of Tuamble's work that compare it to things like scrawlings on a you know bathroom stall, you know, or I mean he even worked on on rule paper, but doodles uh, you know, in class, right? The things that would otherwise be discarded. And there's something uh something changes uh contextually when you see that at scale, like you're talking about, and uh and the way that that uh that he he found that that essence and and communicated it you know with uh with his work. Yeah, there's there's another part of the uh uh so this is this is the author speaking here, but but uh some of the passage that follows really captured my my interest as well. Uh so it's just a couple couple sentences, and this is on page 27, uh if anyone wants the the precise reference of uh of this book that we're reading from. But uh the author writes, What's more contaminated than what has fallen to the floor? Cast aside and half consumed, the discarded is picked up and turned into art in the mosaic, as in Twambley's work. Narrative in the mosaic of the unswept floor is implied by what's left over.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

I mean, yeah. And these are the moments in the book I think uh Rivkin uh does a very good job of colorfully and creatively piecing together what he loves about Twomblee's work and what others have said about it, but really what what Joshua Rivken has seen in the work himself and how he puts these things together. And you know, you think of that the word contaminator, I have a few definitions here, you know, having having been made impure by exposure addition to something that pollutes contamination is the precedence of an impurity or some other undesirable element that spoils, corrupts, makes unfit or inferior to the material. And to me, there's nothing I love better than making something work that shouldn't, making something fit within a work of art that shouldn't. And I think that's where the critics early on really hammered Twombley. You're not doing anything, you're not doing enough. What are these marks? You're you're covering everything up that you're putting on. You're hiding the things that should be beautiful and you're now making them ugly, right? These are the early critics of Tuambley's work, and these are the critics that don't like Twambli today, even that are saying those things. And so you look at what Rivkin said, like, what's more contaminated than what falls on the floor and is cast aside and discarded, right? And this narrative that Tuambli's creating with this mosaic of things, right? The leftovers of things. There's beauty in that, and that's really him finding this essence in things that maybe are forgotten, things that are not part of conversation anymore, uncovering things. And I love he goes on a little further there, and he says, Rivkin, when I look at the unswept floor, this is what I see. I see the remains of the meal that is normally hidden away or moved out of sight. Here is the highlighted, shadowed, made into something wondrous and strange. And so he's talking about how Twambly, his pieces are like that unswept floor and this gathered up of ideas and moments throughout history and mythology and and poetry and these things, and yet he's hiding them, highlighting them, shadowing them, and then bringing it all out to create this essence in this full piece.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

Yeah. I cannot recall where I read this, but a critic's description of Tuombi's work as Tuamboy paints the way or Tuambi's work looks the way that we think. Or something to that effect, right? Where there's there's so much, you know, there's a there's an undercurrent, there's so much, you know, going on, there's things that right pop up, they're right, whoop, nope. And then we cover those back up again. You know, but just that idea of uh this is a little bit further on, but reading from the book again, to think of the mosaic as part of these fugitive traces is to find a whole world of correspondences to Twambley's art. His paintings, one writer observes, claim the rooms they inhabit. I'm gonna I'm gonna pick up where I left off there, but but that in and of itself, I think is uh I mean that's that's a pr it's a pretty lofty goal. But I mean, who doesn't want as an artist to create work that claim the room right that that that it inhabits? And I I think it's fair to say that that you know, love it or or hate, you know, his work, it definitely does that. I've only had the chance to see his work in person once. And again, it's it's personal preference, it's personal bias as far as what one is drawn to. But that was absolutely the first piece that I went to, and if memory serves me correctly, that's that was in the same room in the Art Institute of Chicago. That's there's a Dakooning piece right on the opposite wall, and I believe a couple of Rothko's, you know, further on in the in the in the space, and I spent plenty of time with those as well. But the first one that I'm drawn to is just there's something almost magnetic about just the exploration, right, of trying to like you know, chase down those those fugitive traces, you know, of of what's there and and and really where it might lead. But continuing from there, so again, his paintings, as one writer observes, claim the rooms they inhabit. So too the mosaic. More striking than these connections is the way in which Twambly gathers debris into his work, the debris of history, the debris of quoted poems, the debris of the body, the debris of the mind. When I look at the unswept floor, this is what I see too. The remains of the meal, and that's where you picked up your quote, right? Yeah. Normally hidden away, discarded, moved out of sight, here, highlighted, shadowed, made into something wondrous and strange. I just I just love that. Yeah. I love it. And and it's clear in his work, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:02

Yeah. You know, as you talked about those things in the word poetry and the way a poet writes and the way a poet works, something that that I study. I mean, I since my grandfather taught me about poetry when I was young and would sit with him and he'd read me Keats and Shelley and Frost and Dickinson and John Doan, and he would just read me poetry, and I'd just sit there, and I've always loved poetry because of that. I think, you know, at a young age, my grandfather was always reading and talk to me about the poets and the great artists and these things. And so I've always read poetry and I've always been fascinated by the structure and the form that poets use and different poets, right? You have poets who speak more abstractly or more thought-based poets, and you have poets who write and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite to find perfect fit, right? And it and I think that's why poets and artists throughout history have always been good friends because they understand the development, the experimentation, that they all work different, but yet they're all trying to do the same thing which is express, especially abstract artists, poets. There's been a long history of them together as friends, and I think, you know, that's what captures me also about Twambley's work is that it is poetic. It works the way a poet works. And I think there's a few lines below there where Revkin says, Is each one of these drawings a poem? Is each mark Twambly makes a poem? Perhaps they are what the mind looks like in the process of making a poem, a pentimento of thought, or are they the x rays of the finished poems, the bones and the organs? Below ordered lines and neat stands as a poem miswritten, erased, revised, then again maybe these are poems in the sense that a poem is as much about what's unsaid as what is said, and the white space of eloquent, deliberate silence. And he talks about that white space of eloquent, deliberate silence because Tuambi has a lot of negative space that exists within his work, right? So you think of a poet writing on paper, you have the words, but then you also have all this extra space. Even a poem in a book, and and uh I hadn't thought about this until now is the way that my mind works. You look at a poem in a book and it's typed out on a page, you have this much words, but this much white space. Did that influence Twamble to create so much negative space within his work, that love of poetry? I don't know. Um but I love this quote by the poet Octavia Paz. It is very difficult to talk about the artist. Always we are talking about another way of trying to understand a secret. It's difficult to talk about an artist because we're just trying to find another way of understanding a secret. Do we really, really know what's being said and what's not being said? Because at the end of the day, even for you and I, we may be telling a story in our work, but there's a whole lot that's left out.

unknown 17:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

A whole lot that's why we're really making it. And I love that because I think that does tie into the the ultimate essence in the work.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Nathan, I want to jump back a little bit to something you said just a few minutes ago before I jumped into the whole poetic side of Twombly. You talked about uh Rivkin mentioning that Twombly's paintings claim the room they inhabit. You know, that is such a grand statement, but I think a statement that all artists need to constantly think about. And this is something I don't know how many years ago I had this thought, might have been six, six or seven years ago, or longer, probably longer.

Artistic Presence and Interpretation's Impact

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Um I was in my studio and I was working on some work, and I was just thinking through how how does my work stand out in a room when I'm not there? Like how does my work stand out and why do certain pieces in a room stand out more than others? Is it just because the work is that much better than others? Is it because that work is doing something different that the other pieces are not doing? Um, or is it because I know the story of specific artists more than I know others, and so I'm more drawn to the work? I started thinking through this in journaling on this, so fast forward a little bit. I have a show, a solo exhibition, where I give a lecture, and it was a very moving audience, a lot of questions, a lot of interaction, and very deep because of this whole series of work that I had the show for was based on uh childhood memories and lifetime memories, and so there was a lot of back and forth of the importance of remembering these things and the importance of these stories remaining with with you and with your family and with your friends, etc. And so then I'm out in LA and for a part of a a postgrad cohort in Los Angeles, and I'm at the Broad Museum, and I'm in the Psy Twambly room, which is fascinating, and I'm just being blown away, and now these ideas start to get even bigger. Well, I know how much my work truly spoke to the audience at my exhibition because I was able to share about it. Now, what happens when I leave that room? Is it the same? For the next person that missed the lecture that walks into that room, how is that work gonna speak? Are my paintings going to claim this room they now inhabit? And so I'm here in the Psy Twambly wing in LA and I'm just going, oh my gosh, they claim the room. I'm thinking to myself, wow, these speak to me, but do they speak to me because of the power of the work, or do they speak to me because I am in love with Psy Twambly myself? So I go back home, I end up speaking on a panel at Nexus, which is uh a UN, a UN deal in New York, and I'm on a panel for story with a group of filmmakers, documentary filmmakers. And I had the urge to kind of share this story with filmmakers when they ask a specific question about our our films and our documentaries being able to tell the story we want to tell truly to the audience. And so I opened up and said, you know, this is a thought that I had as an artist earlier in the year that I've been journaling on, and it's how does my work speak when I'm not in the room? How much time can I spend thinking through and processing how this work is going to speak while I'm creating it? The more energy and the more I put into the story within the work, how does it speak in the room when I'm not there? And but I think what it caused me to do is really start to truly think through what I'm doing and not just creating to create, but creating for a purpose for it to speak and to claim a room. Because I tell all the mentees in the program all the time, what's gonna separate your work on the wall from everybody else's in the room? Are you thinking about that? When it hangs on the wall next to everybody else's, what's gonna make somebody stop that doesn't know your work? You know, what makes me stop when I'm in a museum and I don't know an artist and I walk by and go, Holy shit. Wow. And I have to sit down for a minute and take it in, you know, and thinking through those things. But I just wanted to bring that up before we moved on.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

Well it's funny, you know, you When you bring up documentary filmmaking, it's almost I mean, tell me if you agree with this, this just came to mind, but it almost seems as though you know, documentary filmmaking is equivalent to representational artwork where there's a very s you know, specific objective story that you're trying to tell. The message may or may not be conveyed or received, you know, fully, but there's an intent, right? A specific intent and a specific outcome or or whatever takeaway, right? And the equivalent to, you know, more abstract or non-representational work from a film standpoint might be whatever, more independent film where there's more, you know, more gray area, let's call it, right? Less, you know, not everything is not all the dots are connected. There's more more responsibility on the audience or on the viewer to decide what certain clues or what certain elements mean. I don't know. I think I think that in terms of of Tuongui's work specifically, I mean there's just I just wonder if if that was part of part of his intent in not talking about it was the belief that you know the work really did speak for itself, which I know is something that you talk to your mentees about in the program as well, as far as talking about it. But this I th I feel like, tell me if you agree, but Twamblee's work might be one of the best examples of you know not spoiling the experience of viewing the work or not being spoiled by having all of this information about what it's actually about.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

That's a a great thing to think about, Nathan, because some of us do provide a lot of context from our work. I give very detailed and long titles because I feel like I'm more of a poet-philosopher expressionist than just an abstract expressionist. So I do give context in a lot of my titles, and sometimes the titles have no context, they're just sarcasm as I play in humorous tones as well. But I do give more than a lot of artists do, and I I think it's up to the artist. I don't think there is a wrong way or a right way to do it, but man, there definitely is a mystery behind Cy and his work, you know, and I would say from what I've read, it's not that he wasn't not a people person, because he did have very deep relationships with with friends and people. But he he was very, very introverted, very shy and quiet person who would rather spend his time with a close few and working on his work rather than being at the galas and showing up for the Met dinners and doing all the things that other artists will just throw themselves at to be in the public's eye. And I think that's created a special place for his work too, because you have to spend time with it to try and figure it out and see what he's doing and what he's saying. It's not given to you in the annals of history and books and books and books and videos of him doing things and you can figure it out right away. Like it's created that archival, almost archaeology in some sense, where you're having to excavate these things yourself and in a form of discovery, right? The way archaeologists work, they're trying to discover history and the things we can't find or don't know, and so they're constantly trying to uncover these things to share them. So with his work, we have we have to do that as well because we don't know as much about his life as we do Picasso, right? Where there's book after book after book, and Picasso was his own PR. You know, he was his own PR team, and he was like, Let me tell you about what I do and who I am and what I am. And Psy's like, stay away from me, let me do my thing, and someday I'll at least see my work.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Yeah, as uh as prolific as Picasso likely would be uh, you know, using today's social media channels and opportunities to be out there. That's probably how reclusive and hard to find, you know, Tuamley would likely be uh in the modern day. You know, you you bring up that idea of excavating, and this is something that that really resonated, you know, with me. This is something, uh a quote from the book I'm gonna share here on the on the following page. The author talks about a letter that Tuamble wrote, I've just returned from digging a Roman bath with the director of the museum here. Um North Africa is covered with wonderful Roman cities, and in this part they are just beginning in the last year to excavate. So he was you know literally on an archaeological digs, or at least, you know, for a day. So he goes on to write, Tuamble, the amateur archaeologist, the hungry excavator, stripping away the top layers of the fugitive past. This to me too is one of the powers of his work. There's always a below, some unreachable distance that calls us, keep looking. I mean, that's a keep looking. I mean, I think, I mean, I'll I'll admit, you know, my at first, at first, I don't remember, you know, when I first saw a Tuamley piece, but I had I had a similar response to I think a lot of people have just like, I didn't, I did, I definitely didn't get it. Pretty sure I didn't I didn't love it right away, for sure. A little bit like coffee, didn't didn't love it right away, love it now, but you have to, you know, it requires that that excavation, that that that process of discovery. It's not immediately you know accessible. You kind of have to have to work for it. And um, you know, much like an archaeological day, you know, the things that you really have to work for, you naturally, I think, value more.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Trying to think, I first discovered Twambly, it must have been 99 or 2000. I saw a painting in a film. It was it was kind of like in the back of a staircase when somebody walked by. I think it was a Pierce Broson film. Can't remember. But I do remember seeing the painting. It was one of his um gestural circle paintings, right? With the huge white circles look like it's on chalkboard. And this painting, I went, oh my gosh, what the heck is who is that? And I think it was in the it was in the film, maybe three different scenes. I remember after seeing it, you know, I'd made mental notes of find out who that artist is in the film, did a search and found out PsyQuambly, and then that was my entry into PsychWambly and I had to search. I had to find, right? I couldn't just at that point in time, it was like, how do you find an artist you really want to find? You go to a museum and you hope that they're there. And so that became my my hunt, so to speak, you know, that that I still do today. As I'm at museums and things, and I find an artist I love, I I hunt for them and I find their work. But looking at a Twombly piece, you're excavating, you're digging, you're looking for things, you're finding things. I mean, every time I'm in Houston at the Minnow Collection, I'm constantly doing that. Um, I ran into an artist friend of mine last time I was there, and we were both there at the same time, and we're both side twombly nerds. We overtook the the museum. Um forgive me if I've talked about this in another in another episode. I don't think I have yet, but that could happen at times. And so he and I literally took over the rooms. It was almost as if we were two art historians or curators discussing materials to archival qualities, to things that are hidden or painted over. And the more I read about Twanley, the more you know he's constantly covering things up and whitewashing and covering them up and going over, and we're up in the in the work close and we're finding, hey, there was something here. And and even with the very large untitled um Sega bytacatalyst uh painting that is, I don't know, fifty feet, sixty feet in size, and maybe twenty feet in height by width. Uh it's massive, but I know studying Tuamley, this painting this painting took him twenty-two years to complete. And because it's so large, it would cover the entire room and windows when he put up. It's in three panels. And I I think these panels have been trimmed because they're the way that they work together, there's other things hidden that aren't there that maybe wrapped behind or he cut off, and I think they're probably rearranged from the original. But each panel has a different color, even though it's the same grayish tone. The gray's a little darker, a little lighter. Maybe it was sunnier when he was painting one over the windows, and so it adjusted to the color, or so you're digging like an archaeologist, right, when you're in that room. And why is this one a little darker? This seems to be cut off. What was written on that side as it wraps around and it's no longer exposed? And so you're constantly digging and trying to find these things in his work and pull them out.

Exploring Meaning and Value in Art

SPEAKER_00 30:16

There's so many meanings and so many responses and questions and answers within the work, but there's no true definition that exists today for the pieces. So you have to, as Rifkin did, bring your own loves and your own questions and arguments and things to the piece when you see it.

SPEAKER_01 30:34

You know, that that kind of takes me back to the original quote that we use as our jumping off point, right? That that desire, desiring the ultimate essence. And I think that the more scarce something is, the more valuable it's going to be, even if that thing, whatever's left, uh is contaminated. I mean, I think about uh a random example, but I think about like after my dad passed away, I thought a lot about you know going through his things and spending time in the you know the shop portion of the garage. You know, the these are the the half-used roll of duct tape. That's not inherently valuable. It's contaminated, it was brittle as old. It wasn't even useful for its intended purpose, but his hands were the last hands to rip a piece off, um, just as an example. So just you know, thinking about that and and the the less there is of something, and especially the knowledge that there's not going to be any more, um, which of course applies to every every artist, you know, and their work. Like, this is it, they're they're gone now, there's there's not gonna be any more. You know, but there's something about the scarcity of information or the or the the the lack of volume of of data points to reference that makes every little detail that much more important and meaningful.

SPEAKER_00 31:51

I hope that's something that you as artists are also viewer. So those artists that are out there listening, you're also a viewer and you're also an educator, and you're also a teacher, and you're also a mentor, but you're what also carries that story along for other artists. So I'm always encouraging other artists to be that viewer, go look, go look, go learn. Don't just go look once, go look 10 times. I constantly go back to the Twambley collection in Houston, constantly, even though it's it's the same collection. They're not work isn't changing out regularly. And so it's like, but I see something different and new. I'm excavating new thoughts and new ideas every time I go, but I'm also able to share those thoughts. Whether here on this podcast, whether you and I are talking on the phone or I'm talking with my other artist peers or mentees, like each time I look and learn and excavate, I'm able to share more with the world, with the audience. I'm able to add another ripple in that pond to the story of art and to these things. And we may discover things that the artist never even thought when they were putting into their work. And that's the beauty of art, right? We get to add to the legend, we get to add to the mystery, us fans, as audience, as viewers. And we may be wrong. It doesn't matter. That's the great thing about art. It doesn't matter if the viewer is wrong, because the artist doesn't care at the end of the day. You shouldn't care, he or she. The artist should be creating the work that they want to create that they love. And if the audience's response is negative, okay, whatever. Maybe they're not ready for your work yet. Or maybe take it as a sign as I need to work harder, I need to change, I need to experiment a little more. But you know, that's the great thing about art and going to see it and looking at it is adding to the legend by what you see. And I I consider Psy Twambly an absolute legend, then I consider him an absolute mystery as well in the art world because we don't know. We just have little bits and pieces of words. There is there is a documentary um called Psy Dear that was an independent documentary that is an Italian film that came out a few years ago. It is not regularly available to the public. I searched for it on a regular basis, hoping there's a way I can get it. I know there's an Italian film site that has it, but I have not been able to sign up for it because I think it's basically for educators in Italy. So be on the lookout for Psy Deer, and I hope there's a little bit more historical additions to that that I have not heard or known yet. And I know there is video of Cy within that film as well.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Hmm. Yeah, that would be uh that'd be quite something. Fingers, fingers crossed. Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know what really what we really uh unpack today, but it's I mean, it's a lot like his work and and it's a lot like life, right? Like embrace uncertainty. There's always going to be more questions than answers. And I think that's as an artist, I think that's um, you know, a really healthy mindset and approach, you know, to have is to is to ask those questions and and be okay with the fact that there may not be definitive answers, but the exploration and the pursuit, the the excavation, you know, of attempting to find uh you know to find something in itself is a is a worthy pursuit.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

Nathan and I aren't uh art historians or academics, like we like to say we are. Um I don't I don't have to try to say that. Yeah, yeah. Well, you're way closer than I am. Yeah. Well, I love to read, I love to study, I love to look, I love to learn. I'm a I'm a geek when it comes to learning, especially about art. But this is just us talking. Like these are the things that he and I talk about on a regular basis. We we send quotes to each other regularly. We're like, ooh, did you see this? Ooh, have you heard of this? Have you not heard what this gal or this guy said? I mean, this is just us literally talking to you the way that we end up text messaging or hopping on the phone, FaceTiming the you know, each other randomly and going, Oh my gosh, did you see this? This is just us hanging out and having this conversation of things that we love that we talk about regularly too. So we're gonna be wrong in a lot of stuff, and there's a lot of opinion here. These are things we love and and we like and we discuss. So we absolutely want your debates. We want your your addition to our conversation, you know. So send us what you think. Uh you're way off in your opinion. This is what I think, you know. But that's the beauty of art, is we can bring to the table what we see and what we view, and we can discuss it. And that's how it should, that's how it should be.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

100%. Yeah, it's totally subjective. And uh I don't know shit. And I'm I'm comfortable with that. I I like that, you know, beginner beginner's mindset. And you know, I'm but I I'm I'm a digger, you know, I am a learner, and I think that there's a lot of value from attempting to to find more because there's there's always more. There's always another, just like Tuamley's work, there's always another another layer right there that is, you know, may or may not lead us to the to the next thing. Yeah, we're we're not experts, just a couple of artists talking about art and the uh the process of uh of making it. So any closing thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 36:51

No, I I hope this was a good one. I mean, talking about things I love that that absolutely play a huge part in my work and my history, personal history as an artist, as a twambly eight, I guess you could say, somebody that I am constantly trying to uncover more and more and more about. I mean, I know this quote was from an essay um that he wrote in 57, was it around there, maybe 59, for an Italian journal, Italian magazine, and we tried to find the essay, and it is nowhere to be found. So I'm assuming, right, this is what we do as the audience, we assume that Joshua uh Rifkin probably while he was writing the book had access to archives from Twomblee friends, family collectors, and he probably snapshotted some things to add to the book. So Nathan and I are currently gonna, we're gonna continue to try and find that essay. If we do uncover it, we'll put a link up somewhere for you guys to be able to visit that and see it as well. But if you're in Houston, um, I definitely suggest going to the Manil Collection. Um, the side Twombley gallery is across the street from the main museum. The museum is fantastic as well. Plug to the Manil, which I love, one of my favorite places on the planet. But go see the museum. And if you're if you're going to look at art, you can go to a museum website. A lot of people don't know this, and you can search the collection. So you can go to let's say the Tate, you can go to the Brand Horse, Museum of Modern Art. These

Discovering Art

SPEAKER_00 38:20

are places that have a lot of Twomblies, the Broad. You can actually go and look at their collections. You can look at what's on view so that you can go find the artist that you really want to see in that work, and you can go view it at the museum. So, but I also like the hunt and discovering new people and walking into a room and going, oh my gosh, Joan's here. And I walk into a Joan Mitchell um people in museums probably know me by now because I talk out loud. I'm a I'm an out loud talker and I talk to the artist, and people think I'm weird. And my wife probably will not like me to share that. All right, we'll see you guys next time. All right, see you guys.