Cy Twombly's Untitled (Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor) (1994) is a monumental artwork that encapsulates the artist's profound engagement with classical literature, history, and personal narrative through its expansive scale and intricate composition. This piece, created with oil, acrylic, oil stick, crayon, and graphite on three canvases, measures an impressive 157 ½ × 624 inches. It is currently housed in the Menil Collection in Houston, where it stands as a testament to Twombly's unique ability to blend text, image, and abstract expression in a deeply evocative manner (The Menil Collection).
The journey of this artwork's creation is as epic as its content and scale. Beginning in 1972, Twombly embarked on a 22-year process to bring this vision to life, a period marked by moments of both struggle and clarity. The completion of the piece was notably influenced by Twombly's personal experiences, including a significant health scare in the early 1990s, which, according to some accounts, imbued the artist with a renewed urgency to complete the work. This urgency reflects the existential themes of passage and transition inherent in the painting, as well as in Twombly's broader body of work (LiteraryHub).
The title and thematic essence of the painting draw inspiration from the Roman poet Catullus, specifically Poem 46, in which the poet bids farewell to the province of Asia Minor. Twombly's adaptation of this theme into the title of his work suggests a personal identification with the poet's sentiments of departure and return, threading through the complex layers of memory, place, and time. The painting's visual language, characterized by Twombly's signature mark-making and scribbled text, invites viewers into a contemplative engagement with the passage of life and the traces it leaves behind (LiteraryHub).
Twombly's decision to ultimately name the piece after a misremembered line from Catullus speaks to the artist's interest in the evocative power of words and the subjective nature of memory and interpretation. This aspect of Twombly's work underscores his lifelong fascination with the Mediterranean world's rich tapestry of history and mythology, serving as a fertile ground for his artistic exploration (LiteraryHub).
Untitled (Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor) thus stands as a monumental achievement in Twombly's oeuvre, embodying the artist's profound engagement with the themes of memory, history, and the ephemeral nature of human experience. Through this work, Twombly invites viewers to navigate the interplay between text and image, presence and absence, and the personal and universal, offering a rich and multilayered experience that resonates with the complexities of human emotion and intellect.