Cy Twombly

How did he get where he is with stuff like this?






1. go to art school in Boston
2. join the Arts Students League in New York
3. meet Robert Rauschenberg
4. go to Black Mountain College
5. meet John Cage
6. get taught by Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell
7. do your time in the army as a cryptologist
8. stick your neck out.

The question we must ask, I feel, is how many other students went to Boston Art College, joined the Arts Students League in New York, went to the Black Mountain College, and spent their time scribbling large on big sheets of paper, but pissed Motherwell off by spilling their coffee on his notebook, and never made it?

Surely for every Cy Twombly there are hundreds of others doing stuff just as bizarre, that don't find the crack in the pavement, that don't manage to squeeze through between the billboards, that don't reach the Tipping Point.