Resumen de 'Ecstatic impulses': Cy Twombly's 'Untitled (Bacchus)', 2006-08
Nicholas Cullinan, Nicholas Serota
An analysis of the three large paintings making up the artist Cy Twombly's Untitled (Bacchus) series of 2006 to 2008. Currently on view at the Tate Modern, London, these paintings extend Twombly's series of eight Bacchus paintings from 2005, and were begun on canvases dating from this first campaign of painting. Collectively, the Untitled (Bacchus) paintings explore the conjoined opposites of ecstasy and rage, combining bold, deliberate brushwork with rivulets of vermilion acrylic paint that flow down the skin-colored canvas beneath. Within these works, the ambition of the artist to overcome physical limitations has become a catalyst for an escalation of scope and an amplification of gesture. The results pose important questions not only about Twombly's recent work, but also, and more fundamentally, about the concept of late style.
