Night Trip –  Dada Tribute to Cy Twombly
by ‘Anon Slug’, photo composition by Art Axis c. 2010

( Silver slug trails on concrete flagstone.  Whetstone, N. London. )
– click on the image to enlarge –

In Dada homage to the great American “scratcher-scribbler” who sadly passed away in July this year. What enhanced perception and altered outlooks on life he imparted to others over the decades through his artworks can only be guessed at….

Untitled – by Cy Twombly ( chalk on blackboard )

Link to picture archive of more of Twombly’s magnificent, towering artworks.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Cy+Twombly&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=Dsr&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&prmd=imvnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=FD2hTu-ILYfOhAflqb3wBA&ved=0CFMQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=622

Jerry Saltz celebrates the great artist’s life and work at Saatchi online.
http://magazine.saatchionline.com/articles/artnews/jerry-saltz-celebrates-the-life-and-art-of-cy-twombly

“…Twombly focused on the delicate, scratching and scribbling, fusing looping calligraphic line, odd marks, raw smudges, blackboard-like scrawls, with intimations of myth, narrative, and a Whitman-esque feel for effusion and the erotic. (Roland Barthes once wrote that Twombly’s marks conjure “English colleges, Latin verses, desks, notations in finely written pencil.”) – Jerald Saltz.

Much the same of course could be said for our intrepid little night artist…

The Great Grey slug ( artist’s impression )

Artist Cy Twombly

But to be fair, which ambitious reviewer within the cosy closed upper echelons of today’s pomposity-pervaded art world would wish to limit their careers by daring to argue with this kind of robust defence in the face of “kindergarten crayon scrawl” jibes at Twombly’s art …

In a 1994 article Kirk Varnedoe thought it necessary to defend Twombly’s seemimgly random marks and splashes of paint against the criticism that “This is just scribbles – my kid could do it”.

“One could say that any child could make a drawing like Twombly only in the sense that any fool with a hammer could fragment sculptures as Rodin did, or any house painter could spatter pain as well as Pollock.” ( or any slug could trail a trail … etc – Ed ).
” In none of these cases would it be true. In each case the art lies not so much in the finesse of the individual mark, but in the orchestration of a previously uncodified set of personal “rules” about where to act and where not, how far to go and when to stop, in such a way as the cumulative courtship of seeming chaos defines an original, hybrid kind of order, which in turn illuminates a complex sense of human experience not voiced or left marginal in previous art.”

” A complex sense of human experience not voiced in previous art ” ?
Well…

Art Axis
London Dada central, SE1. October 2011

( meantime, here’s something we scratched out earlier…)

Trafalgar Turmoil ( study ) by Michael St.Mark c. 2011

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Signed editions of Night Trip available to purchase on the London Dada website

Related Work; Starling Sunrise