CY TWOMBLY

Edwin Parker ("Cy" [after "Cyclone" Young]) Twombly, Jr. (April 25, 1928 – July 5, 2011)

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You cannot fully understand Twombly's art unless you know that he is gay. It's often fatuous to reduce an artist to his or her sexuality, but Twombly is working in a tradition that associates homosexuality with an ideal human freedom. This tradition strives for an art unfettered by purpose, function, or meaning. You find such a style in Frank O'Hara's casual aimlessness and in John Ashbery's aimless obscurity—both poets think in the strokes of a subtle crayon. Such a sensibility derives from Walter Pater, the gay Victorian aesthetician who prized in art the quality he called "diaphaneite," a crystalline transparency that "crosses rather than follows the main currents of the world's life"—a "happy, unperplexed dexterity." Update Pater's notion with the brash off-handedness of so much postwar American art—think Pop art and cool jazz—and you arrive at the doodle. I have no idea if Twombly knew about Pater's ideas or cared for them if he did. But his art, distractedly crossing rather than following the main currents of the world fits Pater's values to a T.
Lee Siegel

(slate.com)