having an experience than making a picture.......

article and photo via NY Times:
[ "In the only written statement Cy Twombly ever made about his work,
a short essay in an Italian art journal in 1957, he tried to make clear that
his intentions were not subversive but elementally human. Each line he made,
he said, was “the actual experience” of making the line, adding: “It does not
illustrate. It is the sensation of its own realization.” Years later, he described
this more plainly. “It’s more like I’m having an experience than making a picture,”
he said. The process stood in stark contrast to the detached, effete image that
often clung to Mr. Twombly. After completing a work, in a kind of ecstatic state,
it was as if the painting existed but he himself barely did anymore: “I usually have
to go to bed for a couple of days,” he said.

Cy Twombly, who once practiced drawing in the dark to make his lines less
purposeful, steadfastly followed his own program and looked to his own
muses — often literary ones, like Catullus, Rumi, Pound and Rilke.

He seemed to welcome the privacy that came with unpopularity.
“I had my freedom and that was nice.”
he said in a rare interview, with Nicholas Serota.]

i just finished this great read from NY Times.
love his childlike scribble work and how he
related to his work at the time!