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A Poetics of becoming: the mythography of Cy twombly

Composed of fourteen original essays, the edited volume Contemporary Art and Classical Myth explored the multifaceted intersection of contemporary art and classical myth. 
The essays considered work by artists including Francis Alÿs, Ghada Amer, Wim Delvoye, Luciano Fabro, Joanna Frueh, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Duane Hanson and Yayoi Kusama. The author’s own contribution concentrated on a single work by the American artist Cy Twombly, (Proteus, 1984) and sought to consider how it related to the myth of Proteus. More specifically, the research imperative sought to revisit Roland Barthes’ own writing on the artist in order to re-evaluate, from an ontological perspective, the categories of painting, facture and agency that Twombly, at least with respect to the painting in question, was operating within. In one respect it built on the author’s ongoing critical interrogation of particular spaces and ontologies that modernist historiography has opened up. This latter facet to the author’s research was discussed in two reviews of the edited volume, Grace Ledbetter, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 26.04.12 and Donatien Grau, “The Shape of Archaeology,” Oxford Art Journal Vol. 35, Issue 2, pp. 295-298. This strand to the author’s research had previously been evidenced in peer-reviewed outputs such as “Embodiment, Ambulation and Duration” in Modes of Spectating, (Intellect/The University of Chicago Press), 2009, ISBN 9781841502397. Like all volumes published by Ashgate, Contemporary Art and Classical Myth was peer reviewed by a recognized authority in the field. It was edited by Isabelle Loring Wallace, Associate Professor of Contemporary Art at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia, USA and Jennie Hirsh, Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism, Maryland Institute College of Art, USA.