About this artwork
Untitled is among Cy Twombly’s best-known and earliest sculptures. Once painted stark white, it is now evocatively weathered. The work presents a fence-like array of wooden spoon handles and other shafts of wood that were wrapped together with bands of cloth and mounted on a miniature stepped platform. It can be variously read—either separately or simultaneously—as depicting a powerful “fetish” object, a set of mute panpipes, or an unidentified archaeological fragment.
Twombly made this assemblage in New York City after formative travels in both Italy and North Africa; fellow artist Robert Rauschenberg, who had traveled with him, kept the work in his personal collection for more than fivedecades.
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Status
- On View, Gallery 292
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Department
- Contemporary Art
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Artist
- Cy Twombly
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Title
- Untitled, New York
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Place
- United States (Object made in)
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Date
- 1953
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Medium
- Wood, wire, twine, nails, and house paint, with wax on fabric
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Dimensions
- 26 × 29.2 × 27.9 cm (10 1/4 × 11 1/2 × 11 in.)
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Credit Line
- Gift of Edlis Neeson Collection
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Reference Number
- 2015.138
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Copyright
- © Cy Twombly Foundation
Extended information about this artwork
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.