5 Creative Takeaways from Houston’s Cy Twombly Gallery

Last month, I got to visit a museum that's been at the top of my museum bucket list for several years now. While on a trip through Houston, Jesús and I stopped to see the Cy Twombly Gallery at the Menil Collection.

I have loved Twombly's spontaneous mark-making and muted color palettes ever since I was in high school. And in 2021, I read a biography on his life and work that really solidified his ranking as one of my all-time favorite artists.

With anticipation and excitement building in the weeks and days that led up to our trip, I wasn't quite sure how I was going to feel as I stepped through the museum's doors.

At the very least, I was praying to feel refreshed and inspired that day. To walk away from the gallery with just one new idea for a painting or one principle of design to take home with me and into the studio would be enough.

The building was simple and beautiful, surrounded by lush grass and cascading oak trees that completely contrasted my preconception of a Texas landscape.

It was a quiet and chill Wednesday afternoon.

When we walked into the museum, we were accompanied by only a few other visitors. Most of the time, it was just us, the artwork, and a silent security guard in each room. But mostly, it felt like it was just us and Cy.

As we moved slowly from painting to painting, we began taking in every detail - every glob of paint, every smear of a handprint, every combination of colors. Thankfully, my prayer of one fresh idea or one principle to carry home was soon met with abundance. I could feel inspiration washing over me like a sweet, colorful wave.

The Cy Twombly Gallery was the kind of gallery, the kind of collection, l could see myself coming to over and over again and never growing tired of finding something new to discover in the artwork. Luckily for Houston residents, they can visit as often as they like, as the gallery is always free for visitors.

After we circled through the multiple gallery rooms in the museum, we turned around at the front door to do another lap. Every room was an expansive space to accommodate the massive artwork, all lit by diffused natural light from above (my favorite).

As we walked, I started taking notes – gathering all my observations and recording every idea or lesson in my phone as to not forget what I was thinking in response to what I saw. These notes made me giddy and eager to come home and paint.

Of what I wrote down, I picked the five most important things I learned that day to share here.

1. Paint like a child would paint, and in doing so, don't be afraid to make a mess.

In one of the gallery rooms, a series of nine untitled paintings is displayed, known as the "Green Paintings" or the "Ponds." The Menil Collection shared on Instagram that "The artist considered the nine separate canvases a single work of art and painted them simultaneously in forty-eight hours with his hands, rather than brushes."

I was so excited to see these paintings before visiting.

I knew Twombly created the series by hand, rather than using brushes, but getting to look at them up close, in person, made me love them even more than I thought I would.

As I noticed all the thick drips of paint and evidence of his presence - the clear hand prints and fingerprints that swirled into the watery texture of the surfaces - I could envision how messy Twombly’s studio must have looked in the two days that he spent making the series.

I could picture his paint-covered hands and arms, so childlike and carefree, as they scooped and smeared the green and white paints around the canvases. I imagined that his quick pace in the 48 hour window gave him the motivation to work fast, take chances, and let go of any pressure to be perfect.

My imagination of how this series of paintings came to life moved me because it made the artwork feel so carefree, and so human. Not only did the Green Paintings inspire me to give finger painting more of a try when I got home, but they also encouraged me to be unafraid to take risks and take up space. To paint like a child and make a joyful mess.

2. Sometimes the marks you don’t make are as powerful as the ones that you do.

In much of my work, I tend to have a more maximalist approach as I enjoy layering and filling up my canvases with a lot of movement and color.

Something that I was surprised to notice when visiting the Cy Twombly Gallery is that although Twombly works in a lot of layers and dense mark-making as well (something I’ve always connected with), he contrasts this with a shocking amount of negative space.

When taking in his work, especially his largest piece (Untitled (Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor), I couldn’t help but feel as though I was listing to a beautiful orchestra with Cy as the composer.

As much as he embraced thick, complex layering in many areas of his canvas, he also deliberately balanced it all with areas of rest and release - spaces with no marks at all. This creates such a beautiful rise and fall of drama as you spend time with each artwork.

Seeing this communicated a great deal of confidence to me. It’s an fun creative challenge to know when to let a painting speak and when to create a moment of rest within a canvas. This is a consideration I’ve since paid a lot more attention to as I’ve come home and continued working.

Cy Twombly, *Untitled (Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor)*, 1994, oil, acrylic, oil stick, crayon, and graphite on canvas, 3 panels, 157 ½ × 624 inches (400.1 × 1,585 cm), The Menil Collection, Houston

3. Good art is not about how much money you have for supplies.

Throughout the gallery, I noticed several plaques that listed "house paint" as one of the materials Twombly used for his paintings. House paint. There was one room in particular dedicated to a series of large white canvases with house paint as the primary material listed. I found this to be so fun.

Photo: Paul Hester for The Menil Collection

In another one of the rooms, there was a group of pieces with custom frames that, upon closer inspection, were made from using quarter round - a simple piece of cheap trim you can get from any hardware store. Nails are exposed, corners are imperfect. There’s such an unfussy nature to the work that I loved.

Cy Twombly, *Analysis of the Rose as Sentimental Despair* (Detail), 1985, The Menil Collection, Houston

In these instances, the materials are clearly being used to serve the artist's desire for an efficient execution of his ideas. It doesn’t matter that they aren’t fine art materials, only that Twombly was able to create something incredible with them.

The use of these “low-brow” materials give the artwork such a bold and unpretentious look that I loved. Seeing the pieces reminded me that anything at all can become a material for a work of art - there are no rules about what kind of paint you use. I left feeling inspired to be more resourceful and less precious with my supplies.

4. Find a focal point and be dramatic about it.

Twombly leaned into drama. Inspired by Roman history, scenes of battles, and stories of ancient myths, he wasn't shy at all about theatrical expression through paint. I can admire and respect this as it encouraged me to paint with even more boldness.

5. A painting's surface is whatever you want it to be.

I think that artists, myself included, often feel that a painting has to exist within the four sides of a canvas or sheet of paper. My visit to the Twombly Gallery reminded me that this doesn't have to be the case at all.

Twombly painted on wooden panels, he painted on found objects, and he built frames with unique dimensions (See: Analysis of the Rose as Sentimental Despair (A Painting in Five Parts), 1985).

The piece that inspired me the most – a work that spanned beyond constraints – was a painting within the Green Series where Twombly allowed his artwork to extend onto the frame. By covering the frame with his paint and fingerprints he makes it a part of the artwork - the two become one. I LOVED this piece.

Seeing these unique ways that Twombly broke the "rules" of his canvas inspired me to think a more outside the box as well.

Bonus: Overthinking leads to overworking. Keep making and moving on.

In the biography I read on Cy Twombly, Joshua Rivkin quotes Helen Frankenthaler (another painter whom I admire greatly).

"A really good picture looks as if it happened at once," she said during an interview. "It's an immediate image."

Frankenthaler then elaborates on her point, explaining that when the artwork is "labored and overworked," one can tell. "And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute."

This is the magic of Twombly's art. It always looks to have happened in an instant, even though I know this isn't the case.

Seeing his work up close and in person confirmed this magic and inspired me to keep moving, keep making, and not overthink my work.

I appreciated the motivation I found during my time in Houston to keep striving for that one "really beautiful wrist motion" that synchronizes with my head and heart - with the hope of making more and more work that looks to have happened all at once, just as Twombly did.

Thank you for reading! I hope you found these insights both inspiring and helpful. Let me know in the comments if one in particular lesson resonates with you, too.

Cheers,

Anna