Twombly's manner of presenting abstraction as something stumbled upon—as a quality of innocence rather than as an artistic style—led critics to dismiss him in the 1960s, a time when art writers judged an artist by his usefulness to their ideas about art. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, an atmosphere of wildly proliferating styles welcomed artists like Twombly who didn't fit into anyone's aesthetic theory. His reputation began to soar. These days Twombly is triumphant. His inscrutable visual slang fuses high art's refinement and popular culture's easygoingness, a synthesis desired by just about every contemporary artist. A few critics remain unsettled by what they consider to be Twombly's meaningless gestures. But their unease actually testifies to the power of his unheedfulness. There is a pagan quality to Twombly's gentle insistence on his special destiny. He seems in thrall to older gods and has to doodle their names in a trance, from time to time.