Cy Twombly

Two short essays by the eminent French semiologist Roland Barthes (1915-1980), written in the 1970s for the catalogs of the Paris exhibitions of Cy Twombly (1928-2011), serve as an excellent introduction to the work of the American painter. Barthes insightfully analyzes the combination of abstract visuality and the concreteness of writing that defines the distinctive character of Twombly's art.