To Cy Twombly

A couple of weeks ago, a friend gave me an article from the NY Times Literary Supplement. The article was about Cy Twombly's new exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in NYC, called "The Rose". His paintings were in response to Rilke's poem, "Les Roses".

As so many artists who paint "florals" will know, in the art world, the subject is considered prosaic, the work of Sunday painters. As a sometime painter of flowers, I was delighted to see Cy Twombly painting 'florals'. Very freeing. I felt like laughing out loud. I guess it's OK to paint 'florals' now that Cy Twombly is doing it!

Last week after visiting Linwood Gardens, I visited the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo to see the Action/Abstraction exhibition, Pollock, De Kooning and American Art, 1940-1976. I loved the exhibition, particularly the work of Anne Truitt, whose memoirs I had read. I had never seen her work before. Tall, elegant, silent wooden columns, each side carefully prepared and painted in many layers of colour. Her intent was to release colour from the wall.

A lovely thing happened next. On my way out of the gallery after spending a few hours in the exhibition, I stopped off in the gallery gift shop before I left. There I found the most astonishing book on Cy Twombly, which I promptly bought, called "Photographs, 1951-2007". In the introductory essay to the work, Lazlo Glozer, art historian and critic, says, 'Intoxicating beauty, flooded with light, saturated with poesy, ensconced in iridescent color, suspicious of harmony." The photos are like paintings. They are mostly sepia in tone, shot on a point and shoot camera I think, but printed with a glorious grainy surface. Many of the photos are blurry. They would never win a prize at my local camera club show....or in Photolife Magazine. They are kind of personal journal entries..photos of his studio, or details of his paintings, or photos of peonies, roses, details of sculptures. But some sort of fragile and honest beauty is felt here. Inspiring.

Tree Peonies

Sappho

Persephone

Hephestus

Oread

Nike
I'm still floating in the world of tree peonies as I look at the more than 700 photos that I took at Linwood Gardens last week. These otherwise private gardens are open for three weekends during tree peony season. And it is spectacular, not only to see the tree peonies, but also to see the weathered structures of the formal gardens that were designed by the architect Thomas Fox and to experience the palpable history that surrounds the place.

Tree Peonies are native to the mountainside and forest regions of China and Tibet. Known as the "King of Flowers", it was held sacred in the gardens of monasteries and temple courts, and grown as an exclusive treasure of the Imperial Palaces. In the eighth century, Buddhist monks took the Chinese tree peony, moutan, to Japan. Extensive hybridization by Japanese gardeners produced distinctive flowers with pure colouring, and elegant lines with long, delicate stems. The tree peony did not appear in the gardens in England and America until the nineteenth century, but even then it remained a rare plant because it was difficult to propagate.

In 1888 the discover of Paeonia lutea, the long sought yellow peony, enabled the introduction of new genetic material and unique colours never before seen. Dr. Saunders, in the late 1920's, made the cross between the P. lutea and the Japanese varities, obtaining seventy new hybrids with exceptional vigor and beauty. Over the next 50 years, William Gratwick and Nassos Daphnis continued the hybridization work at Linwood Gardens, creating an historic collection of new tree peonies, which are preserved at Linwood. The Daphnis varieties are named after Greek Gods and Goddesses and I've included a few photos of his peonies here.