Reading Barthes/writing Twombly.
Item
-
Title
-
Reading Barthes/writing Twombly.
-
Identifier
-
AAI3167246
-
identifier
-
3167246
-
Creator
-
Daigle, Claire L.
-
Contributor
-
Adviser: Anna Chave
-
Date
-
2004
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Art History
-
Abstract
-
In 1979 French theorist Roland Barthes wrote two essays about the work of American artist Cy Twombly, "The Wisdom of Art" and "Works on Paper." This specific encounter held the opportunity to undertake a sustained analysis of art practice/theory relations. "Part I. Introduction" begins by historically situating the two principal characters of the dissertation by plotting their careers along parallel timelines. "Part II. Reading Barthes: 'The Wisdom of Art'" begins by considering three paintings from 1962 in which Twombly provides a code of interpretation. A detailed analysis of "The Wisdom of Art," Barthes's essay for the 1979 Twombly Whitney Museum retrospective, comprises the remaining portion of "Part II." The major debate in the Twombly literature, characterized by a form/content polarity, is set forth and challenged. Bearing strongly on the discussion are Barthes's theory of the intertext and its implications for reception, his approach to mechanisms of meaning in Twombly's work, and his emphasis on the amateur.;"Part III. Writing Twombly," disrupting in the flow of the readings of Barthes's essays, addresses the topic of color. "Questions of Color: The Green Paintings," focuses on a group of Twombly's paintings from the 1980s, insistent investigations of color set in relation to Rilke's poems and Monet's paintings.;"Part IV. Reading Barthes: 'Works on Paper'" offers a thorough explication of Barthes's second essay on Twombly along a different angle of view---through Barthes's "biographemes" (thematic figures). Among the issues of greatest importance are Barthes's utopic definition of Writing as graphic activity, his plea for reading from the body, his emphasis on the gauche, the trope of graffiti, and his interest in Eastern thought.;"Part V. Conclusion" takes up the phrase at the heart of Barthes's endeavor, "the responsibility of form," considering its different implications for theorist, painter, and art historian. Twombly's abiding interests in mythology and poetry re-surface in an elaboration of his works on the Orpheus and Euridice myth. Classical mythology serves as the vehicle for differentiating Barthes's and Twombly's approaches to meaning, and for arguing the ultimate inseparability of activity and object, of form and content in Twombly's work.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy Restricted.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.