Twombly (July)

Cy Twombly’s Victoriana series shows a fine regard for the graphic encounter of Europe with Australia. Wrought iron work, for example, that standard of the age, exists in fraught symmetry beside the protean asymmetry of the native flora it was pressed into service to imitate and even, at times, surround. Hints of 4th of July intrusion, green oblong freeway signs, add tension. A critic, best unnamed, accuses Twombly of a fine disregard of forms as its suits him, but in Victoriana any littoral between figurative and non-figurative is indiscernible as he renders surely and impartially the fateful encounters of continents.