Lines of Transition: Translation as artistic process in the work of Cy Twombly
American artist Cy Twombly's practice is rooted in the engagement with literature and history. His line is a hybrid between text and image, and challenged the very definition of an image in the art theoretical discourse. When studying Twombly’s sources it becomes evident that his books focus on translation, exploring the nuances between literal, free, paraphrase or versioning practices. While the research on the literary and poetic references of his work is vast, his genuine interest in translation processes has been overlooked.
Twombly collected 1st editions as well as facsimiles and manuscripts of books, which documented the translator’s process. He embarked in an „archeological investigation“ of tracing the notes, marks, comments and signs of the path undertaken by the translation's author: In Ezra Pound’s corrections of his translation of T.S. Elliot’s The Waste Land, Twombly didn't only focus on the story’s transformation process, but looked at the hybrid character of the page between readable text and visual mark-making. Pound’s graphisms are a mix of editor codes and his individual system of signs.
The corrected script is a „medium“ defined by the transition between different stages, a phase of liminality, that usually remains hidden. The presentation gave an insight in how Twombly understands the plurality of authorship by exploring the journey of historic texts and their inherent layered nature, that opens their availability to individual interpretation, as well as the dimension of time, that emerges in the recognition of a text as a mutable instance, a version and not a fixed object of permanence. It also argued that his visual vocabulary is nourished by sources outside the visual arts: the study of note making by authors and translators, that engage in a gestural process, that echoes in Twomblys usage of misspelling, crossing, deformation and erasure, mirroring the editing processes as artistic strategies.
Lecture as part of the online symposium
Poetic Translations. Conversations across the plurality of Arts disciplines in Visual Arts Exhibitions
Solent University, Southhampton, UK