Why Cy?
Published on 1. February 2025
Book
Hardback
978-1-915743-88-6 (ISBN)
Description
In February 2024, Tacita Dean undertook a residency in the Cy Twombly Gallery at The Menil Collection in Houston. Designed by architect Renzo Piano in collaboration with Twombly, the Gallery houses a display of Twombly's work organised by the artist to augment the building's mood of disorientation and temporal suspension. For Dean, it is a site of pilgrimage and 'a place to go out of your head'. Dean has loved the work of the American painter and sculptor since writing her art school thesis on him in the late 1980s. She photographed his studio home in Gaeta, Italy, in 2009, made a film with him in 2011 called Edwin Parker,? and has written about his work on numerous occasions. During her time at the Menil, she asked permission to spend a night in the Gallery.
Why Cy is a book of exuberant adoration, full of colour and blackandwhite photographs that pay homage to this singular artist. It reflects Dean's longstanding admiration for Twombly's work and her close affinity with it, while at the same time taking a new, surprising, and unintended path.
The book includes a booklet of notes by Dean developed out of her night with Cy, and coincides with the exhibition 'Tacita Dean: Blind Folly' at The Menil Collection (11 October 2024-19 April 2025), which includes a room dedicated to celebrating the connection between Dean and Twombly.
Why Cy is a book of exuberant adoration, full of colour and blackandwhite photographs that pay homage to this singular artist. It reflects Dean's longstanding admiration for Twombly's work and her close affinity with it, while at the same time taking a new, surprising, and unintended path.
The book includes a booklet of notes by Dean developed out of her night with Cy, and coincides with the exhibition 'Tacita Dean: Blind Folly' at The Menil Collection (11 October 2024-19 April 2025), which includes a room dedicated to celebrating the connection between Dean and Twombly.
More details
Person
Tacita Dean (b. 1965, Canterbury) is a British European artist living and working in Berlin and Los Angeles. She has been the recipient of numerous prizes including the Schwitters Prize in 2009, the Hugo Boss Prize at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 2006, and the Sixth Benesse Prize at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005. Solo exhibitions were recently held in 2023 at the Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection, Paris, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and in 2022 at MUDAM, Luxembourg and The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. In 2018, a trilogy of solo exhibitions, 'LANDSCAPE', 'PORTRAIT', 'STILL LIFE', was held simultaneously at the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery, and the Royal Academy of Arts in London. In 2021, she designed the sets and costumes for the ballet The Dante Project, a collaborative production with Wayne McGregor and Thomas Ades, which premiered at the Royal Opera House in London. In 2011, Dean's work FILM, shown in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, marked the beginning of a campaign to preserve photochemical film.