Cy Twombly : Quattro Stagioni, Estate

In order to read unreadable writing, we have to divorce conventional language.

In this large scaled painting by Cy Twombly which shared its name with Antonio Vivaldi’s famous violin concerto, Quattro Stagioni: Estate (The Four Seasons: Summer), three clusters of yellow paint and traces of white over bled down from where they met the canvas. Behind those layers of colors seemed to be some scribbles of writing, small sets of English alphabets. But if one tries to read them using the system of English language, they remained gobbledygook. Actually, they can’t even be pronounced out loud.

The original concerto by Vivaldi’s wordless, but it had a sonnet as its accompaniment. I almost saw the beginning of the third verse of the sonnet for Estate’s first movement, ‘Scioglie il Cucco la Voce, e tosto intesa’. Then at the second I started to read it, it was already gone, disconnected, unreadable. But is it meaningless?

Scribbles often seen in Twombly’s works. It’s part of his abstract visualization. They remained unreadable, but still able to perceive as visual forms rather than a servant of language, which filled his voice in silence storm of colors.

Back then when human started to mark something on the surface of the earth, it should be closer, whether between writing and drawing, or them and us, the markers. But languages developed, adding more complicated systems, parted writing farther and farther from us. Writing became ambiguous, unfamiliar, and less sincere. Twombly freed his writings from being owned by language, and reunited his verbal and visual interpretation.