Cy Twombly: "Wilder Shores of Love" 1985

 "There is a frequent adoption of an explicitly female voice in Twombly's art, be it Sappho's poetry or Lesley Blanch's "The Wilder Shores of Love", a book which treats the theme of Western women who succeeded in living, often en travesti, in the Middle East." (Art in America by Brooks Adams)

In "Wilder Shores of Love" a blob of green vegetation (a hydrangea?) rests at the bottom left edge of the picture and two red phalluses sprout from this green chunk of matter, ejaculating red paint.

The protrusions are unmistakably penises, but at the same time they are also paintbrushes or even pens. The source matter, the green blob, could be a magma of memories and emotions, full of myths and poetry; the paint that spews from the phallic brushes achieves a kind of volcanic eloquence. Many critics have struggled to find a place for Twombly in an overarching narrative of twentieth-century art because he puts the flesh before the word and pleasure before meaning. This is art as pastoral otium, at ease with exile and mortality. (Craig Burnett, Timesonline)