A Classicist’s Encounter with Cy Twombly’s Fifty Days at Iliam

In the Spring, I recorded a podcast for the Philadelphia Museum of Art about Cy Twombly’s Classicism. The first half is a talk based on the introduction I delivered at the American Philological Association Annual Meeting in January for a panel I put together called Abstracting Classics: Cy Twombly, Modern Art and the Ancient World (here is a link to the abstracts of the five papers presented http://apaclassics.org/index.php/annual_meeting/143rd_annual_meeting_abstracts_table// & scroll down to no. 28). The second part is a general discussion of the Fifty Days at Iliam series (1978) housed at the Museum. You can access the blog via the Museum website (under ‘Lectures’):

http://www.philamuseum.org/podcast/

Or directly from iTunes:

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/pma-lectures/id213621946?mt=2

While I mainly discuss Fifty Days at Iliam, I also refer to three other Twombly paintings (one of which you may recognize as the background to this blog!):

Cy Twombly Solon I (1952)


Cy Twombly Untitled I (Bacchus) (2005)

Cy Twombly Academy (1955)

And, although it is no substitute to visiting the gallery (http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/85709.html), here is an installation view, followed by the 10 paintings of the Fifty Days at Iliam series.

Happy listening!