Modern art is rubbish
Would somebody care to enlighten me about the genius of ? At the weekend I visited the on this 'master of modern painting' and I left none the wiser. My knowledge of Twombly was limited before the show. I knew that he is an American who has spent much of his life in Italy and also that he had something to do with period following , but that was it. I'd never gone to a gallery and had my attention grabbed by one of his pictures. That is still the case.
I'm not opposed to abstraction on principle, I've never uttered the words "A three-year-old child could do that" in response to an artwork, but I have to admit that those words echoed around my head as I wandered through the show. I would have been more receptive to room upon room of splatters, smears and lumps if they hadn't been so boring to look at. Standing in front of a white canvas covered with pencil scribbles I willed myself to feel or think something... or at least something other than, "I hope the later work is better". Despite their titles, Murder of Passion and Crimes of Passion II were no more exciting. The text panels around the gallery mentioned "heightened eroticism and sensuality" but I couldn't feel any heat in these pictures. The paintings were dry and academic, an impression heightened by the continuous references to mythology and poetry. Orpheus, check; Bacchus, check; the great god Apollo, check. I usually find myth and legend very resonant, but in this case I remained resistant - they just seemed like empty references. Jonathan Jones makes a lucid case for Twombly as "" and his comparison of one graphic artist with another ("Banksy is a thick person's idea of a radical artist. Twombly is a thinking person's") has ensured that people have taken notice of his article, but I'm not buying it. I'm afraid it will take more than slagging off Banksy to convince me that Twombly is a genius.
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