Untitled, (Peony Blossom Painting)
Untitled (Peony Blossom Painting) (2007) is one of six large scale paintings (252x552 cm) executed in acrylic, wax crayon and pencil. Twombly completed the series during the early winter of 2007 in his studio in Gaeta in central Italy. Twombly follows a succession of artists who painted peonies and flowering trees, including Hokusai, Henri Matisse, Edouard Manet and Andy Warhol. The series, conceived late in Twombly’s career, was first exhibited in 2007 as part of the show Blooming: A Scattering of Blossom and Other Things in Avignon, France. The idea of ‘blooming’ was the central concept for the artist, which he aimed to express both in the Peonies series and the Rose series (another series dedicated to flowers that Twombly completed in 2008). Three out of the six canvases in the Peonies series incorporate written text, mostly haikus, short forms of Japanese poetry.
The peony has a rich symbolism deeply rooted in both Eastern and Western traditions. According to Greek mythology, the peony was named after Paeon, a pupil of the god of medicine and healing, Asclepius. Leto, the mother of Apollo and goddess of fertility, asked Paeon to procure a magical root from Mount Olympus. This ignited the wrath of Asclepius, who wanted to kill Paeon. In order to save him, Zeus turned Paeon into a peony. The peony, is also significant in Chinese culture, and was declared the national flower by the Qing dynasty. However, because Twombly incorporated haiku’s in several of the paintings in the series, it is especially important to understand the symbolism of the peony in the Japanese context. In Japan, the peony is an imperial symbol of royalty, and is a recurring motif in Japanese art. In particular, the motif decorated Japanese screens during the Edo period (1603-1868). Interestingly, the six part series of paintings corresponds with the proportions of the traditional Japanese screens that consist of six vertical sections. If examined as a whole, the Peonies Series is Twombly’s contemporary incarnation of an Edo folding screen. Twombly certainly was aware of these associations, as he showed a great admiration for Japanese culture and aesthetics, especially for their textiles, colors and motifs.
In final stages of his career, Twombly paints the peonies with fervor and power. Untitled (Peony Blossom Painting) shows the peonies through expressive circular brushstrokes. The artists used deep shades of red, allowing the paint to drip down over the light yellow background. Some of the brushstrokes are similar to Twombly’s characteristic strokes of running loops seen in paintings such as Untitled (Bacchus) (2005). These can be traced even earlier to the rows of thin circular lines in Cold Stream (1966). Untitled (Peony Blossom Painting) is one of the paintings in the Peony series that does not have a textual element. Twombly explained that he added the poems to some of the paintings in order to give them nuance, and emphasize the act of blooming. The paintings were inspired by image of a flower in bloom, like the haiku that concentrates on a single natural image. The artist looked to nature for inspiration, but at the same time, he presented the peony in its artistic, historical and literary context, thus giving the artwork an additional level of depth.
