Cy Twombly and the Art of Mistakes
There is something exhilarating about Cy Twombly’s art. His strokes are whimsical and spontaneous. He isn’t stressed about perfection. This is absolutely not the way we do math.
With math, we are chock full of stress, bound by perfection and terrified of looking stupid. We are so ashamed and stressed we erase mistakes and scrap work — even when the scrap work is right! But here’s Cy Twombly:
I use paint as an eraser. If I don’t like something, I just paint it out. (Jacobus 2016)
So casual. So devil may care. Cy Twombly celebrated his mistakes.
When I look at a Twombly canvas, I don’t see mistakes. I see passion and evolution of thought. Look at the gorgeous drop and slop of Untitled (Gaeta):
Cy Twombly, Untitled (Gaeta) 1993 © Cy Twombly Foundation.
Can you imagine throwing paint at hard math problems? MoMA would call. And the Guggenheim. Larry Gagosian, if we’re lucky. And since we’d like a bidding war, we’d make more and more mistakes. Splish, sploosh, splash. The irony is we’d become better and better at math:
One of the most interesting findings from research on the brain to emerge over recent years is something that I try to communicate as widely as I can. We now know that when students make a mistake in maths, their brain grows, synapses fire, and connections are made This finding tells us that we want students to make mistakes in maths class and that students should not view mistakes as learning failures but as learning achievements. But students everywhere feel terrible when they make a mistake. They think it means they are not a “maths person.” (Boaler 2009)
Mistakes actually help our brains grow! (Moser 2011)
I have a couple of cards about this. So we can all get going making world-famous works of mess ups.
(This doodle is on a card.)
Cy Twombly, Quattro stagioni I. Autunno (1993-1994) © Cy Twombly Foundation (I think this is currently at MoMA)
Boaler, Jo. The Elephant in the Classroom. Helping Children Learn and Love Maths. Souvenir Press, an imprint of Profile Books Ltd. (2009)
Jacobus, Mary. Reading Cy Twombly. Poetry in Paint. Princeton University Press. (2016)
Moser, J. S. et. al. Mind Your Errors: Evidence for a Neural Mechanism Linking Growth Mind-Set to Adaptive Post-Error Adjustments. (2011)