Art Ew - National Gallery of Australia

has remarked, it is named after a 1973 book by Peter
Tompkins and Christopher Bird which investigates the
physical, emotional and spiritual relations between plants,
humans and the universe.
Another contemporary artist who cogitates on
questions of culture and history is the American Cy
Twombly, who has lived and worked in Italy for the last
fifty-five years. As well as paintings and drawings, Twombly
makes sculptures. They are often assembled from industrial
metal, plastic or wooden objects, then painted white and
occasionally cast in bronze in small editions. Untitled 2005,
one of an edition of six, has a unique patina, or surface
treatment, of mottled pale grey-green.
The patina has something of the quality of lichen
covering gravestones in a shady cemetery, which is
appropriate as it serves as a kind of memorial to a friend of
the artist. Inscribed on the base are the words ‘In memory
of Dominique Bozo’, who was head of the Pompidou
Centre until his premature death in 1993. But ‘Victory’
is also written high on the work. It has a sail form, and a
rectangular base, and stands the same height as a classical
Greek sculpture in the Louvre, the Victory of Samothrace.
She was the goddess of victory. The equivocal nature
of death and memory is recalled when we consider that
Admiral Nelson won the Battle of Trafalgar from his
flagship – and was fatally wounded on board – the Victory.
Returning sculpture to the grand, meditative space of
the lower level, now known as the National Australia Bank
Sculpture Gallery, hopefully restores the original intention
of the National Gallery’s founders to showcase sculpture
as a central part of the collection, and to display it as a
powerful and extraordinary medium of modern art. a
Christine Dixon
Senior Curator, International Painting and Sculpture
artonview spring 2007 13