Chalk: The Art and Erasure of Cy Twombly

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This first biography of Cy Twombly, one of the most important and least understood American artists of the 20th Century, explores the enduring mysteries of his work and life. **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 Including previously unpublished photographs, Chalk presents a more personal and searching type of biography than we've ever encountered, and brings to life a more complex Twombly than we've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.

Reviews

"A creative portal into the life of the enigmantic, 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

Author Bio

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 FulbrightScholar 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.