The great upstager: how Monet made Turner and Twombly look ordinary | Art | The Guardian


Play all audios:

Epic ... a detail from Monet's The Water-Lily Pond. Photograph: Albertina, ViennaEpic ... a detail from Monet's The Water-Lily Pond. Photograph: Albertina, ViennaArt This article is more


than 12 years oldReviewThe great upstager: how Monet made Turner and Twombly look ordinaryThis article is more than 12 years oldCy Twombly seems fake by comparison – and JMW Turner like a 


man who painted with custard. Jonathan Jones on Claude Monet's domination of an exhibition showcasing the three artistsJonathan JonesTue 19 Jun 2012 20.33 CESTShare The American painter Cy


Twombly died last year at the height of his fame. He was 83, but recognition had come late; it was in his 60s and 70s that he reaped the rewards of a lifetime of making art, and, as the


glory grew, created many of his most ambitious works. The comparisons grew more lavish until, by the end of his life, he was exhibiting alongside the classical master Nicolas Poussin. In


Tate Liverpool's new exhibition, it is JMW Turner and Claude Monet who are lucky enough to share the honours.


JMW Turner's Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory). Photograph: Tate Is it wise to short-circuit art history like this, blithely assuming that a famous name of our own time can hang alongside


hallowed giants? It does not help that Tate Liverpool has made a slightly stale selection of Twombly's works. It seems like only yesterday that I was moved by one of his epic paintings about


the lovers Hero and Leander, at Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. Now I'm having to weep for Leander by the Mersey, too. Twombly's paintings, inspired by the myth about a young man who


drowns while swimming to his love across the Hellespont, are here juxtaposed with Turner's 1837 painting of the same story. In Turner's treatment, lofty temples and impassioned figures are


eclipsed by a boiling, glistening sea. This has an honesty and rugged complexity that makes Twombly's misty colours seem sentimental.


Twombly's finest painting here is