Introduction

'Yet there is quite often in a single painter
A whole history of painting'
(Barthes, 1986: 229).

'Whatever the metamorphoses of painting, whatever the support and the frame, we are always faced with the same question: what is happening, there?' (Barthes 1986: 177). These are the opening lines to a catalogue essay written by Roland Barthes to accompany a retrospective of art works produced by Cy Twombly from 1954 to 1977. The question remains valid, it's what I ask when viewing a 1975 work done on paper with oil stick and pencil entitled 'APOLLO'. The first thing you, the viewer, might do is to read. If you are literate you do it automatically, the word 'APOLLO' screams at you in large purple letters. To misquote the Bible, (and with my apologies ), in the beginning you see the word. It engages your mind. It denotes classical myth, the god of light but it connotes much more. For me it summoned up ideas of ancient Greece or Rome, culture, knowledge, art, learning and also America, space, moon landings, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. These latter connotations are discarded as soon as I read the  following  words : in pencil appear to be two lists, one on the left with words like 'PHOEBUS', 'SMINTHEUS', 'AGYIEUS' and 'PLATANISTIUS', and the one on the right containing – 'LAUREL', 'PALMTREE', 'SWAN' and 'HAWK'. The words on the left feel Greek, although I have no understanding of them. They denote nothing to me but the order of the letters in the words connotes ancient language, Greek perhaps or Latin.

However the connotations have been made I now firmly believe that the 'APOLLO' Twombly is referring to is the one of Greek mythology. The words on the right I now assume are somehow connected to this mythic god. Through research I discover that the artist is referring to the Roman god and that the words on the left are the various names he has been known by. The words on the right are things he has been associated with. The question remains: what appears to be happening, there? Is it nothing more than some doodles, perhaps the sort of doodles that are done unconsciously. It is at this point that I start doing what the illiterate person did immediately; I examine the marks that make up the words. I notice that APOLLO has been repeatedly gone over again and again. Sometimes in purple oil stick sometimes in pencil. Whichever tool has been used the impression gained is that it has been held in a clenched fist, like an infant would hold a crayon, rather than in a scribe's hand. Emotion seems to be the driving force behind the forming of the letters. The words underneath, the two lists, are done in pencil and seem more considered as if carefully copied one letter at a time by someone learning to write. My thoughts have now moved from the words and the ideas that they summon up to the marks that make up the words and the artist who made them. What is he trying to do or say? What is happening here?

Matthew Collings' comment in Art Review (Collings 2004)  asserts  that 'Twombly writes APOLLO or LOVE in order to pump up emotion in a twee direction'. In an article in The Telegraph (Dorment, April 2004) a similar thought is expressed when the author states that 'although Twombly does not attempt to represent the god he does invoke his presence through words, colour and calligraphy'. Is either of these statements true? Do the words summon up emotion or invoke a presence? Perhaps the word APOLLO has no meaning, denotes nothing beyond that of a logo, like the letters F.C.U.K. on a designer label tee-shirt. It becomes what Barthes calls performative; the meaning is identified with the action of uttering (Barthes 1986:181). Rosalind Krauss states that 'when Twombly is idly doodling a name on his canvas … Leda, Mars, Apollo – he is operating within the field of the performative: I mark you, I name you,  I call you 'painting' (Krauss 1994). As an audience should we do what Matthew Collings says and 'look at Twombly purely as a painter to desist from gushing about the ancient world and to concentrate on the way the artist draws and handles pigment?' (Dorment, April 2004). Or is Barthes' view that:  
 
'When Twombly writes and repeats this one word: Virgil, it is already a commentary on Virgil, for the name  inscribed by hand, not only calls up a whole idea (though an empty one) of ancient culture but also operates a  kind of citation: that of an era of bygone calm, leisurely, even decadent studies: English preparatory schools, Latin verses, desks, lamps, tiny pencil annotations' (Barthes 1986:162), 
 
- the approach we should take to Twombly's art?

This thesis will examine Twombly's art in light of the above propositions. A particular comparison will be established between Twombly and two of his contemporaries, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns who both emerged, like Twombly in the immediate wake of Abstract Expressionism. My analysis of their work will, therefore include a foray into Abstract Expressionism; I shall reference the work of Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg and Jackson Pollock. Additionally I shall draw upon the work of  'philosophers' such as Locke, Wittgenstein and Barthes in examining the use of the word in works by all three artists.