Cy Twombly and Expressionism task
- Summer Hope
- Oct 14, 2017
- 3 min read
As a group we had a presentation given to us about mark making and the different movements within art that reflect upon this. There was several movements introduced/spoken about; Impressionism, Expressionism, Surrealism and then general textile mark makers. After looking and studying the different reasons behind each of these, I wanted to experiment and find more information on 'Expressionism' as I found this technique interesting in the way that the images would 'evoke' emotions and moods for it's audience, the idea of just a simple image or painting being able to create this inspired me. Cy Twombly was the main artist that I liked within this art movement as his work was unique and not something I had really seen before, the marks, shapes and colours he uses each portray meaning and feeling throughout his work, each image being completely different yet extremely unusual.
Following from this research, I found that some of his inspirations for his work came from surroundings of his home in Rome; Greek and Roman mythology and the history of this, also the ancient graffiti on walls. He used his own emotional response to this history within his work; this concept is interesting as it brings context to the image and enables the viewer to understand Twombly's work once knowing the reasons behind it.
'Twombly was interested in the layering of time and history, of painting and drawing, and of various meanings and associations', Twombly doesn't just layer the colour and line within his images, he looks beyond this and uses the context of his images to form this 'layering' effect. An aspect of this context is his past experience being in the army where he was served as a 'Cryptographer', during this time he used to create 'blind drawings', similar to automatic drawing (without looking), but with the lights turned off. These would then create unique compositions and images with the layers of different lines, marks and shapes, this technique of accessing ideas purely from your mind inspired me within my work and from this, I have tried to interpret Twombly's style:
This slideshow above presents my work using Twombly's expressionist style, his marks within his work look spontaneous and quite random due to the 'blind drawing' technique, within some of his works he also used a range of thin line and then a more bold, colourful background. I have tried to use this style of work to create my own images that link both to Twombly's work and also my own, I used various medias; different thickness of pens, watercolour paint and acrylic paint. When first interpreting this style I was somewhat nervous as this type of work was not suited to my usual style as it seemed a bit too messy and bold for me, I prefer keeping to delicate lines and abstract work whereas this involved being more loose with my placement of line and shape onto my page. Despite this change of style, I found that I enjoyed being more experimental and bold with my medias and work, I like the layering of different colour, shape and line within the images I have created as it creates unique contrasts. From researching into this expressionist work and experimenting with this style I feel as though it's enabled me to develop my mark making project and expand my use of different media and ways of creating marks.
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