
Drawing Out Twombly
Dean Rader | LA Review of Books | 5th June 2025
A deep dive into Twombly’s enigmatic art. He polarises opinions, some thinking him a great 20th century artist. Others call some works “a fiasco”. Nothing seems to divide opinion more than his “blackboard” paintings that feature “white looping script, swirls and scribbles”. These works “inhabit a space at the edge of writing and painting” and accommodate competing interpretations. One writer calls them immortal. “I admire that conviction [but] might have said just the opposite: This is mortality.”