ok, tumblr, you win. for now.
OR IS IT ONE AT ALL
they’re the same, sometimes. I think.
don’t be afraid, it’s only love [love is simple!]
don’t be afraid, you’re already dead [love is simple!]
Once I saw the outside of Cy Twombly’s apartment in Rome. It was an exciting day, I was 20 and in my first two weeks of my semester there. It was sunny, which was a nice change from the typically dreary February weather in that part of the world.
I felt a connection with Cy. In addition to being a big fan of his work (in the way all 20-something Art History majors are) Cy was a native Virginian who split the majority of his adult life living between Virginia and Rome. I am also a native Virginian, I had planned on becoming an expatriate as soon as I finished college [note: hasn’t happened yet]. I also had (have) an intense love for abstraction since the 1950s. Basically, Cy and I had a lot in common.
My professor was a friend of Cy’s son. Growing up (also between the US and Rome) she spent many a-childhood afternoon doodlin’ with the Twombly boys. In my imagination, I’m doodling with them, drinking chianti and smoking little cigarettes and making up Italian words– because that’s what people do in Rome in the imagined 70s and 80s. In my alternate dream world of Cy friendship, he gives me style advice (after all, he was one of Vanity Fair’s best dressed of 2009)
None of that is particularly important. I couldn’t find that apartment today if you paid me. All I remember is that there was a large phallic sculpture outside the building, that there was a cafe near by and that it was old (note: that describes nearly every apartment in Rome). What is important is that today marks the end of an era. Cy Twombly inspired countless artists during his lifetime and will inspire countless more in the generations to come.
See Cy Twombly at LACMA, The Whitney, MoMA and at The Menil Collection.
Every few weeks I spend a good, say, 7 hours browsing This Recording. I don’t read in order – that would be too logical – I pick and choose from links and tags and wander aimlessly through past blog posts until it suddenly strikes me that I have been staring into cyber space for hours while at work and should, perhaps, be doing work. It’s not a bad system, really: I get the highlights of things I should be reading, super awesome celebrity gossip, and think about the super huge friend/girl/life crushes I have on Molly Lambert and Almie Rose (they. are. [probably, I don’t know I’ve never met them, whatever] so. cool.) Sometimes it’s totally work related when there are essays on art. Totally. Work. Related.
Yesterday I had a particularly good find when I stumbled across This Recording’s list of “100 Greatest Writers of All Time” No. 44: Charles Baudelaire. Not only did reading short blurbs on 100 writers make me feel super intelligent-and, let’s face it, just plain superior to you- it also gave me an EXCELLENT opportunity to do one of my most favorite activities: make nerdy photoshop images involving pictures of (my) animals. Hallie: 2. Not-Hallie: 0.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with Dandy-Cat, (Charles) Baudelaire Parker. Bam. Eat it up, European Lit majors.
So I used you for a while that summer, just to relate to a pop song.