Curated by Jonas Storsve

We may think we’re well-versed on Cy Twombly by now, but we’ve been surprised before; his work is easy to recognize yet, crucially, hard to know. This fall, the Pompidou promises a definitive retrospective—the first since Twombly’s death in 2011 and by far the largest ever—that will attend to his propensity for series. The emphasis will be on his radical, affective attenuation of history painting, with three extraordinary suites convening for the first time: Nine Discourses on Commodus, 1963; Fifty Days at Iliam, 1978; and Coronation of Sesostris, 2000. Approximately 140 works in all, in painting, drawing, sculpture, collage, and photography, will track Twombly’s career from the early 1950s to his final months. An authoritative offering, to be sure (supplemented by a lavish catalogue), and one that is perhaps big and rich enough to make the ultimate historical claim for the unfixedness that, paradoxically, defines his practice.

— Kate Nesin