If you want to sample his work, you can see his iconic large-scale ''The Four Seasons", a set of paintings charting the seasonal cycles, at the Tate Modern, from 19 June, among other works. The two sets of four enormous canvases have been brought together for the first time since they left his studio.

The Four Seasons "evoke the natural rhythms of death and rebirth often found in classical culture", according to Tate, with a philosophical daubing scrawled in pencil on one canvas that poses the reflective thought: "Ah it goes, is lost."

Critics have described his style of graffiti as "the most literate and gentlemanly kind, steeped in the classics."

Graffiti steeped in the classics does not exactly sound very rock and roll. And genteel graffiti sounds like a contradiction in terms. Isn't graffiti impolite by its very nature, all about violation and vandalism?

The whole concept of a graffiti style being adopted by such a classical abstract painter makes me wonder about the definition of graffiti, and its many historical purposes.

I have always assumed it is a rude, un-genteel art-form; from its historical beginnings as inscriptions on the walls of ancient ruins and catacombs of Rome to Basquiat's scrawls on the disused walls of Manhattan as a teenager, and the work of anonymous graffiti artists in New York or Paris, daubing their underground systems with images influenced by the hip-hop culture.

Looking at the Twombly's works, it does look angry at times, and naive, and scribbled. The main difference is that it's not scribbled on caves or the back of bus shelters. I wonder what Roman graffiti artists would have made of it all......