Cy Twombly's Fifty Days at Iliam returns to the museum from a retrospective of the artist's work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Twombly (1928–2011) initially selected the six sculptures in this exhibition for the museum in 2011 as complements to Fifty Days at Iliam. Five of those works are recent gifts of the Cy Twombly Foundation.
Alter Gallery 176 and Tuttleman Gallery 174, first floor
Main Building
A "painting in ten parts" about the final days of the Trojan War, Fifty Days at Iliam represents the pinnacle of Twombly's lifelong preoccupation with Greek and Roman mythology. In it, he fuses an 18th-century translation of Homer's ancient poem The Iliad with abstraction and figuration. The artist purposefully misspells the besieged Trojan city as Iliam. The letter "a" stands for the Greek warrior Achilles, whose rage over the death of friend Patroclus propels the end of the ten-year conflict. Within ten large canvases, Twombly explores heroism and aggression, comradeship and revenge, victory and mourning.
Fifty Days at Iliam is Cy Twombly’s painterly rendition of the last fifty days of the Trojan War. The ten canvases can be read sequentially or experienced as an all-encompassing panorama that conjures up the sensation of witnessing the battle firsthand. 1989-90-1--10
Support for this exhibition has been provided by The Daniel W. Dietrich II Fund for Excellence in Contemporary Art.
Carlos Basualdo, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Senior Curator of Contemporary Art
