Chalk The Art and Erasure of Cy Twombly - Hardcover

Joshua Rivkin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1612197183 ISBN 13: 9781612197180

Publisher: Melville House Publishing, 2018

Synopsis

Chalk follows the life and career of the great American painter Cy Twombly, from his life as a young painter, to his expatriate years in Italy; his obsession with myths and history, to his struggle for recognition. Twombly carefully managed his own image, writing almost nothing about his life and work, and giving only a handful of interviews. Through years of scholarship and archival research, first-person interviews, and a sensitive eye to Twombly's art, Joshua Rivkin separates the myth from the reality to bring to life a more complicated and fascinating Twombly than we've ever known.

About this title

Review:

"A creative portal into the life of the enigmatic, reclusive, modernist painter... Rivkin's first book--impeccably researched, lavishly and lovingly written, insightful and discerning--is a joy to read." --*starred* KIRKUS REVIEWS

"Rivkin brings his sensibility and prowess as a poet and essayist to this unusually reflective, stealthily dramatic inquiry into the enigmatic life and work of artist Cy Twombly... An extraordinarily involving, gorgeously written chronicle of art, controversy, fame, and the perils of biography." --*starred* BOOKLIST

"Reviled when young, revered when old, the elusive Twombly surprisingly emerges in this fascinating biography, which traces the difficulties of tracking down the man as thoroughly as it fills in the blurred, half-erased likeness. This is the record of a heroic journey of discovery."
--acclaimed author and memoirist Edmund White

"Joshua Rivkin's sensitive eye and investigative ambition expand and enrich our understanding of Cy Twombly's genius in this tenderly rendered biography."--Rachel Corbett, author of You Must Change Your Life

"So much more than a study of the life and work of the famously guarded Twombly. At once candid and tender, meditative and unsparing . . . this book is a gift to Twombly devotees and newcomers alike--as imbued with beauty, genius, and vitality as the artist's work that is its subject." --Lacy Johnson, author of The Other Side

"Joshua Rivkin's revelatory Chalk performs an archaeology of a life and explores the layers below those we think we already know (or maybe those we never even dreamed existed)."
--R. Tripp Evans, author of Grant Wood: A Life

"This book is a network of glances, an architecture of mirrors and hallways, all in pursuit of a 'figure in the carpet'--the mysterious Twombly and the haunting scrawl of his beautiful paintings." --Alexander Nemerov, Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University and author of Soulmaker: The Times of Lewis Hine

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Melville House Publishing
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1612197183
• ISBN 13: 9781612197180
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 1