Installation view of The Agnes Gund Garden Lobby, The Museum of Modern Art, Fall, 2011. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar
Cy Twombly. Untitled. 1970. Oil-based house paint and crayon on canvas. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest and The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection (both by exchange), 1994
The installation coincided with a memorial that the Museum organized for Twombly, who passed away on July 5 at age 83. It joins a group of seven recently acquired sculptures and three other paintings by the artist that will remain on view in other areas of the Museum through the end of the year.
Twombly was a key member of the generation of American artists immediately following the Abstract Expressionists. Untitled is the largest in a series of works on gray grounds that he produced between 1967 and 1971. The painting, rendered in oil-based house paint and white Caran d’Asche crayon on canvas, features jagged- and curved-edged scrawls, reminiscent of chalk on a blackboard, that form no actual words. To create his fluid, continuous lines even in the upper register of the work, Twombly reportedly sat on the shoulders of a friend, who shuttled back and forth along the length of the canvas.
Because of its mammoth scale (it measures 13′ 3 3/8″ x 21′ 1/8″), Untitled is stored rolled around an archival tube, separate from its stretcher. Each time the work is hung, a team of in-house and outside experts come together to stretch the canvas anew on a network of stretcher bars in situ, since it is too big to maneuver through doorways or elevators in its sprawling final form. (This is the fourth time the work has been installed in the Museum since MoMA’s 2004 renovation.) What follows is an illustrated play-by-play of that process, which took place one recent evening after the Museum closed to the public.
Installation team putting together the stretcher
First, we put together the stretcher, which is stored in three pieces. The reinforced grid of crossbars provides additional support and prevents the extra long canvas from slackening in the center.
Installation team positions the rolled painting
We covered the marble floor of the lobby with cardboard to provide a foundation layer of protection, and then positioned the massive roll over it.
Installation team unrolls the canvas
Then, we let it loose! The extremely fragile painted surface was overlaid with a sheet of archival mylar for protection when the canvas was last prepared for storage. So as we rolled the canvas off of its storage tube and laid it face down onto the floor, the protective mylar came with it and acted as a barrier between the painted surface and the covered floor.
Installation team lays the stretcher across the back of the canvas
Next, we laid the stretcher across the top of the back of the canvas…
Installation team aligns the stretcher
…and aligned the stretcher so that there was an even amount of slack extending beyond its edges all the way around. We also affixed rope to the top of the stretcher. You’ll see why in a moment.
Installation team adds bows to stretcher
After tethering 2x4s to the back of the stretcher to keep its weight off the canvas during the stretching process…
Installation team staples the canvas to the stretcher
…we started stapling! We pulled the tacking edge of the canvas up and over the stretcher bar, and stapled it at regular intervals along the back edge.
Installation team prepares to lift the canvas
Once the canvas was stretched and the 2x4s were removed, our crew grabbed hold of the ropes affixed to the top portion of the stretcher and got into position. Notice the strip of wood on the wall visible in the background of this photograph. That’s part of the cleat: it interlocks with a mirrored wooden strip on the back of the stretcher to form the structure responsible for holding the work up on the wall. This method allows for a more even distribution of weight than traditional mounting devices, such as hooks, and is therefore often employed when hanging large, heavy works. We had already determined the height at which the work would be hung, based on what our conservators recommended to be a safe distance from the floor. But the cleat system allows for flexibility in placement, as the painting can slide left and right along the cleat on the wall.
Installation team pulls the painting into position
Then, they began to pull on the ropes to hoist the painting up to meet the wall.
The work is now upright
When the work was upright, directly beneath the cleat, one team lifted the work off the floor and rested its bottom edge on the padded blocks sitting on manual hydraulic lifts, while other crew members steadied the work from above.
Mounted work
The crew members on the floor raised their manual hydraulic lifts to elevate the painting high enough to engage the cleat on the wall. The crew working from above then carefully slid the painting along the cleat while the curator made adjustments to determine the final placement. And—voilà!—our work was done. It was a lengthy, involved, and, at times, nerve-wracking project (it’s not every day that a masterpiece is lying face-down on the floor!), but an equally fascinating one, thanks to a fabulous team of experienced, talented conservators and art preparators.
We hope you have an opportunity to see this very special painting, on view at the Museum through November.
Comments
exciting!!! love Twombly and the paintinga is so expresive
Posted by marge sheridan
that looked lot a lot of work
Posted by iconart
Thanks for showing us this process. I had no idea this is how paintings were stored, or the amount strategy necessary to hang such a large work.
Posted by Angela
Nice!
Posted by Kong-Fu Pand
Wow that is amazing!! Where were theses guys when I was trying to put a 3 ft mirror in my Mustang LOL
Posted by Tracey Easter | Poetic Photo Press
That was so helpful to know. I saw a Jackson Pollock at the University of Iowa. It was 25 long and I wondered how it got shipped there. Thanks.
Posted by Lori Landis
o expozitie foarte interesanta!
Posted by ioan gurau
Wow, that’s quite labor intensive…Kudos to the team who put that up!! Thanks for sharing.
Posted by Carmen
I would love to see it in person. Size does matter in art. I am recalling the Orange-Blue Rothko at SFMOMA, a Jackson Pollock, which I can’t recall where. Does anyone remember the Monet Water Lilies at MOMA? Are they still there? (I am in the San Francisco Bay Area.) Replicating what the eye sees in reality, providing a visual concourse, affects the viewer emotionally, not to mention the added respect or reverence for so much work implied. Still, in not seeing the actual painting, I cannot foretell if the creation, being so big, might cause one to question the artist’s intent, where size becomes the sole issue vs. the motion of the ocean of everything in between. There comes a point, where the refinement of the painting as a whole determines its reputation. My 15-hour “Sunflowers at Night,” which is 6×12 foot oil painting, and my 6×10 foot (6-month to paint) color field painting are big, but are they good? As the eye travels across the canvas and the mind contemplates: Size, scope, medium, subject matter, etc., and then when one slips into the contemplation of the self, perhaps it is at that point that size doesn’t matter and the work proves its value. I think the theme of a chalkboard is going to be exciting. All of us have stood before one. I used to draw on the chalkboards in the English Department at the University of California at Berkeley and wondered what the writers thought. I am also sensing from the Twombly that there are layers of gray-black and maybe a faint, out-of-focus image behind the scribbling, but in all, I feel the texture of the scribbling is enough of a reference to penmanship, teachers, the design of the lines, and what seems previous erasures, like a cloud, the landscape of our minds’ memories of the experience of being in school, in art school maybe. Is the experience going to be like sitting before a great big cloud? Is it a bit like a literary fog? I am already feeling something elated, dreamy, and magnificent! The ghosts of our intellectual life in a classroom, the landscape of time and change in how as Marshall McLuhan spoke of the medium as the message and how it affects us, are these the themes in this work? And are they as Rothko ventured to play on our emotions? To me this is a childhood connection; everything we ever learned from a chalkboard and this is genius.
Posted by Mario Savioni
Saw Picasso’s Guernica at MOMA (late 1970s?). Wondering if it was shipped and installed the same way.
Posted by linda
awesome
Posted by juanitodel72
wonderfully installed,such a big painting.
Posted by gopa kundu
Hi!
Very interesting to know about the installation techniques at your museum. I work in Tuusula Art Museum in Finland and we have similar problems because of the large size of works. Though our spaces are definitely smaller!
Posted by Päivi
Great job, guys! it looks just amazing!
:::R.I.P. CY:::
::you and your art will live forever::
Posted by Barbara Dabanoglu
beats to the left, up to the right, no i said left etc. where is this crew when you need them. Wonderful pictures.
Mania Row
UK
Posted by Mania Row
Love the photo of the whole crew lined up along the edges of the painting! This is fascinating.
Posted by Jeanne Walsh
Big deal, thats hardly difficult and small time where I work, and I stretch my own canvases all the time, some over 10′ by myself. And my Judgment Triptych soon to be at Our Lady of Angels Cathedral, where god exists unlike the souless Contempt artscene, 17′ total and taken off for shows before.
And who care if this giant chalkboard of scribbles got a scratch or two, do you really think that would matter? Really? REALLY?
I love Southpark, cant wait for them to do a artscene show.
Save the colorfilled and spiritual Watts Towers(Nuestro Pueblo)
Tear down the increasingly drab and soulless Ivories
Posted by Donald Frazell
The “OLD MASTER”, ah…. homage to the anciet“`
keeping the fire fueled….
jayzo
Posted by jay strommen
Donald Frazell is a wannabe artist/art critic who has never been solicited for an art show in his life. He has never worked in the arts in any capacity. He is a button pusher at a local copy shop and thats about the best he can do with his extensive education in “world history and the arts. Please note that his distain for artist with degrees is driven by the fact that he doesn’t own a degree in any field. He is not being considered by the Vatican or any other establishment for exhibition. As for his claim of being a man, it’s curious why he still lives in his parents house at the age of 50. He brags of an extensive knowledge of music particularly jazz. How many instruments does he play? None. His knowledge of music and music theory- none. I would challenge Frazell to show me middle C on a piano. I doubt he even knows what that is. Every comment he makes drifts of into a dillusional incoherent babel about anything from jazz, to his days as a professional basketball coach (???), to his former Nation of Islam Taibo Goddess (if you can imagine such a thing). He is also known for physically attacking gallery owners when they don’t give him a show. This is a fact. Beware of this man (if you can call him that). I implore Frazell to please spare the rest of the civilized world of his disjointed rants and distasteful perspectives. I would also encourage him to get a real education in something useful and relevant. He will never make a career in the arts. He is a mediocre painter whose color palette comes straight from the tube. You have a long way to go and a lot learn before you can call yourself even a frustrated artist best. You’re not even in the ballpark. Your critiques reveal your lack of maturity, sophistication, and most of all common sense. In effect you have revealed yourself to be a true moron.
Posted by s. gaines
I see I have a cut and paste stalker, He has posted on three blogs now, musta hurt his tender feeligns in the past, see the SFMoMA blog for full reply. Have a nice day!
Posted by Donald Frazell
Love the s. gaines comment.
Have NO idea who Donald Frazell is. But his comment about this very interesting blog article does sound moronic and dismissive.
LOVE Cy Twombly. His large-scale works are amazing. Still remember seeing his Fifty Days at Iliam. Stunning!
Posted by M. Maugenest
Great piece, I love large scale paintings. I prefer stretchers from alustretch.us ; One can adjust the tension even at large sixes and at each cross brace. One of the best solutions for large works that need to be taken apart for transportation.
Posted by Alex
Excellent article! So good to see a side of the art world not often shown!
Posted by Angel Matamoros