Scribbles from Italy: Cy Twombly's Experiment in Seeing Goethe See Language

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In this Subject: Literature
By this author: Block, Richard

Author: Block, Richard

Source: Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik, The Enlightended Eye: Goethe and Visual Culture. Edited by Evelyn K. Moore and Patricia Anne Simpson , pp. 289-309(21)

Publisher: Rodopi

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Abstract:

Understood as a serial painting, Cy Twombly's Goethe in Italy authenticates the need for a second sight or what Goethe called the "Auge des Geistes" ["eye of the mind"] to recover a form that transcends the temporality of scientific and artistic observation. But as Goethe's scientific works demonstrate, the eye can only visualize its own processes. The signature, or the penultimate image in Twombly's serial painting, thus emerges to stabilize seeing's endlessly referential structure. But reading and seeing the signature is a blur; that is to say, the scribble, which is also the last of Twombly's images, is the signature of German Classicism or Goethe's post-Italy oeuvre.

Document Type: Research article

Publication date: 2007-06-01