Chalk: The Art and Erasure of Cy Twombly

Rivkin, Joshua

ISBN 10: 1612198546 / ISBN 13: 9781612198545

Published by Melville House, 2020

pp. 496. Seller Inventory # 370116923

Synopsis:

**A New York Times Editors Choice**

"The most substantive biography of the artist to date...propulsive, positive and persuasive."--Holland Cotter, New York Times Book Review

**PEN / Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography Finalist**

**A Marfield Prize Finalist**

Cy Twombly was a man obsessed with myth and history--including his own. Shuttling between stunning homes in Italy and the United States where he perfected his room-size canvases, he managed his public image carefully and rarely gave interviews.

Upon first seeing Twombly's remarkable paintings, writer Joshua Rivkin became obsessed himself with the mysterious artist, and began chasing every lead, big or small--anything that might illuminate those works, or who Twombly really was.

Now, after unprecedented archival research and years of interviews, Rivkin has reconstructed Twombly's life, from his time at the legendary Black Mountain College to his canonization in a 1994 MoMA retrospective; from his heady explorations of Rome in the 1950s with Robert Rauschenberg to the ongoing efforts to shape his legacy after his death.

Including previously unpublished photographs, Chalk presents a more personal and searching type of biography than we've ever encountered, and brings to life a more complex Twombly than we've ever known.

About the Author: Joshua Rivkin's poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Slate, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and Best New Poets. A former Fulbright Scholar in Rome, Italy, as well as a Stegner Fellow in poetry, he has received awards from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and Ucross Foundation. He teaches creative writing for Stanford's Continuing Studies and lives in Salt Lake City.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Chalk: The Art and Erasure of Cy Twombly
Publisher: Melville House
Publication Date: 2020
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: New