reading barthes essay on twombly and i will get back to this, but he points out that what makes twombly most like a child is the effort that is placed, to use freud, an ego rather then an id, the scrawls, etc are so deeply rooted in language that they can not be raw or random

the essay is among barthes best,but i think that he is wrong on a few counts

1) i think that the language thing is a dodge for twombly, i think his attempts at languge are parodic or cryptic to the point of on purpose indecerphability.
2) the effort question is not decided, how delibrate or difficult the scribbles are, esp with the use of sqaures, tumbling lines, white space, etc in the mid 60s amd 70s drawings, and his use of lacunae, all suggest the randomness as a cage like strategy, as opposed to the these are my emotions, raw and pure butch posturing that comes out of other gestural abexers or gestural abstractionists at all
3) he refuses to acknowledge twombly as a colourist--his work in the 90s, thick impastos of bruisey, ugly, brackish tones, or bright citrus/pop tones, or both in the same work, is v. much a colourist coming from the closet, but his chalk work from the 80s on french royal blue fields, or how he uses slashes of kelly or crimson in his drawings from the mid 60s, or even his evocotive use of erasing white, all suggest a man who knew and used colour well (cerebally, and barthes attaches colour to joy, and just joy, attaching himself to a chromophobic tradition, that is against the use of colour as an intellectual excercise)
4) he ignores the print and sculpture, the print work being impt b/c you cannot really make a gestural print, the minute it is mechincally reproduced, the primary artisthood is lost, or given to a process, his print work then, is a deconstrution of the gestrual excercise he is engaging in. the monochromatic sculptures, always struck me as a really clever white washing, shrinking of the importance of monumental objects--they are camp, but camp at its most wry/dry (ie he takes trash, literally discarded relics, and instead of celebratign them for their own merits, he makes v. careful neo classical manquettes, and until v. recently paints them one colour--and then names them after rome or egypt or whatever--so the whole david smith/tony smith/anthony caro steel cock show offs are emasculated, by the table top size and delicacy of the work, but the keinholz/johns/raushcenberg/pallazzo throw everything on the wall and call it america shitck is deconstrcuted, because the trash is cleaned and presented as an object of good taste--of spiritual rigour, even the idea of garbage as spirtual rigour is campy, and as john waters reminds us in art forum, some of them look like pigeon shit:
CY TWOMBLY, UNTITLED (1992):

I defy you to come up with a more cutting-edge piece of work than this shockingly beautiful sculpture I first saw at the opening of the Menil Collection's Cy Twombly Gallery in Houston. Rich people, art critics, and museum trustees never looked more vulnerable as they turned the corner and came face-to-face with this rudely witty, obscenely elegant piece that made everybody in the room look like they were trying too hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it's supposed to be about "time and meaning," "transformation," and "metamorphosis and myth," but to me it looks like a most confident and graceful depiction of Godzilla's discharge. Go see it. It's still there.

twomblys sculptures in the last little bit have gotten rid of the all white on white (and even his monochromoticism makes fun of the constant mastbatory techincal excercises of people like ryman, because they are not about the paint, or what the end of paitning means)

so anyways, i love twombly, he is awesome

(the interesting thing, is that in task lately, ive tried to paint like him, and i have some photos labelled twombly, but i still cannot manage to get close, the closest i get is my todo notebooks)

also, im hungry