Naming the Gods: Cy Twombly’s Passionate Poiesis

Naming the Gods: Cy Twombly’s Passionate Poiesis is a monographic study by clinical psychologist and Jungian psychoanalyst Gary D. Astrachan. The book’s analysis focuses on Twombly and his radically creative practice, framing it in relation to classical Greek mythology.

Astrachan examines Twombly’s work through the entwined figures of Orpheus—lyre player, lover, and traveler to the underworld—and Dionysos/Bacchus—god of wine, ecstasy, and madness. These two principal leitmotifs animate and inform Twombly’s oeuvre across all his mediums, from the early 1950s until the last series of brilliantly colored paintings he made just before his death in 2011.