On the Bowery

This silkscreen by Twombly is from the portfolio of 10 artists, entitled 'On the Bowery', 1971 and is part of Twombly's Blackboard series (1966-71), so-named because the artwork appeared to have been inspired by the notion of the classroom blackboard or the child’s primer as a temporal and highly graphic conveyor of information. Twombly’s first Blackboard paintings had been made after a year-long break from painting following the 1964 debacle when the Baroque exuberance of his Nine Discourses on Commodus series had been savagely attacked by American critics.