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Lot Essay
'My paintings talk of relationships. How bodies come together. How they touch. How they separate. How they live together, in harmony and disharmony'... 'Its edge defines its relationship to its neighbour and how it exists in context. My paintings want to tell stories that are an abstracted equivalent of how the world of human relationships is made and unmade. How it is possible to evolve as a human being in this'
(S. Scully interview with W. Smerling, Constantinople or the Sensual Concealed. The Imagery of Sean Scully, exh. cat., MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisburg, 2009, p. 8).
Created in 1996, Black White White is a majestic, large-scale work by American painter Sean Scully at the height of his practice. The painting recalls the legacy of post-War abstraction through its geometric vocabulary of painted squares, both black and white, superimposed with a rectangular panel of contrasting white and taupe stripes. This central motif within the painting's overall checkerboard composition lends it a distinctly human quality. Indeed, in this work from the artist's 'Passenger' series, Scully himself has posited a 'mother-child association, something being protected or held by something bigger' (S. Scully quoted in Sean Scully, exh. cat., Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, 2001, p. 220). Unlike Carl Andre's alloy squares or Donald Judd's industrial series, Black White White celebrates the expressive potential of abstraction, the artist's almost haptic application of paint heightening the work's emotional timbre. Scully freely uses impasto, over-painting and layering pigment to create a luxuriant paint surface. The traces of the artist's broad, gestural brushstrokes proliferate across the canvas, captivating the viewer with their seductive and tactile quality. As Susanne Kleine has observed, '[Scully] perceives an implicit, concealed sensuality, which occasionally reveals itself; he senses the rich pictorial world of which he cannot partake, yet which is always present and arouses curiosity' (S. Kleine, 'The Imagery of Sean Scully', Constantinople or the Sensual Concealed. The Imagery of Sean Scully, exh. cat., MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisberg, 2009, p. 14).
In this respect, Scully marries the geometric architecture of Minimalism with the dramatic sense of emotion or abstract sublime evinced by the monumental canvases of Abstract Expressionists Barnett Newman or Mark Rothko. For Scully, as he has elaborated 'the whole point of painting is that it has the potential to be so humanistic, so expressive. To give that up is a tremendous mistake, because then what you are doing is imitating forms of technological expression that can be manifested more directly, more efficiently, and frankly, more beautifully, in their original form. It is the opposite of what I am trying to do. I want my brushstrokes to be full of feeling - material feeling manifested in form and colour' (S. Scully quoted in B. Kennedy, Sean Scully: The Art of the Stripe, exh. cat., Hood Museum of Art Dartmouth College, Hanover, 2008, p. 66).
Scully began his career as a figurative painter in Britain in 1965. It was in London that Scully first encountered the works of many of his art historical idols including Vincent van Gogh whose Van Gogh's Chair (1888) introduced him to the concept of the stripe, a motif that has since become his hallmark. At the Tate Gallery, Scully was also deeply impressed by the work of Giorgio Morandi whose subtle use of colour appears to resonate with Scully's own composition in Black White White. As he once described his fascination, in words that could equally describe his own aesthetic, 'Morandi paints like no other, before or since. His brushstroke is in complete philosophical agreement with the subject, the scale and the colour of his paintings. It is expressive, though it is modest, and not so expressionistic as to disturb the sense of meditative silence that inhabits all his works' (S. Scully, 'Giorgio Morandi: Resistance and Persistence', Sean Scully: Resistance and Persistence: Selected Writings, London 2006, p. 15).
In 1969, Scully travelled to Morocco and became captivated by the sights he discovered there: the strips of colour-dyed wool hanging up to dry, the rich carpets and tents, the faded and fragmented facades of buildings he photographed. In 1972 he was awarded a scholarship to Harvard and soon after devoted himself exclusively to abstraction. At first his approach was informed by Minimalism's brand of formal purism but by the early 1980s he came to the conclusion that 'the Minimalists [had] removed the content from Abstract Expressionism. Accordingly art reached the point where it had lost its ability to communicate'; a function and capacity for art which he now deems fundamental (S. Kleine, 'The Imagery of Sean Scully', Constantinople or the Sensual Concealed. The Imagery of Sean Scully, exh. cat., MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisberg, 2009, p. 18). In 1975, Scully moved to New York, establishing his studio in the city and becoming an American citizen in 1983. Scully's paintings have always been deeply influenced by his visual experiences and in Black White White, the allusion to brickwork or the urban configuration of his adoptive city is apparent in the elegant blocks of his composition.
(S. Scully interview with W. Smerling, Constantinople or the Sensual Concealed. The Imagery of Sean Scully, exh. cat., MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisburg, 2009, p. 8).
Created in 1996, Black White White is a majestic, large-scale work by American painter Sean Scully at the height of his practice. The painting recalls the legacy of post-War abstraction through its geometric vocabulary of painted squares, both black and white, superimposed with a rectangular panel of contrasting white and taupe stripes. This central motif within the painting's overall checkerboard composition lends it a distinctly human quality. Indeed, in this work from the artist's 'Passenger' series, Scully himself has posited a 'mother-child association, something being protected or held by something bigger' (S. Scully quoted in Sean Scully, exh. cat., Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, 2001, p. 220). Unlike Carl Andre's alloy squares or Donald Judd's industrial series, Black White White celebrates the expressive potential of abstraction, the artist's almost haptic application of paint heightening the work's emotional timbre. Scully freely uses impasto, over-painting and layering pigment to create a luxuriant paint surface. The traces of the artist's broad, gestural brushstrokes proliferate across the canvas, captivating the viewer with their seductive and tactile quality. As Susanne Kleine has observed, '[Scully] perceives an implicit, concealed sensuality, which occasionally reveals itself; he senses the rich pictorial world of which he cannot partake, yet which is always present and arouses curiosity' (S. Kleine, 'The Imagery of Sean Scully', Constantinople or the Sensual Concealed. The Imagery of Sean Scully, exh. cat., MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisberg, 2009, p. 14).
In this respect, Scully marries the geometric architecture of Minimalism with the dramatic sense of emotion or abstract sublime evinced by the monumental canvases of Abstract Expressionists Barnett Newman or Mark Rothko. For Scully, as he has elaborated 'the whole point of painting is that it has the potential to be so humanistic, so expressive. To give that up is a tremendous mistake, because then what you are doing is imitating forms of technological expression that can be manifested more directly, more efficiently, and frankly, more beautifully, in their original form. It is the opposite of what I am trying to do. I want my brushstrokes to be full of feeling - material feeling manifested in form and colour' (S. Scully quoted in B. Kennedy, Sean Scully: The Art of the Stripe, exh. cat., Hood Museum of Art Dartmouth College, Hanover, 2008, p. 66).
Scully began his career as a figurative painter in Britain in 1965. It was in London that Scully first encountered the works of many of his art historical idols including Vincent van Gogh whose Van Gogh's Chair (1888) introduced him to the concept of the stripe, a motif that has since become his hallmark. At the Tate Gallery, Scully was also deeply impressed by the work of Giorgio Morandi whose subtle use of colour appears to resonate with Scully's own composition in Black White White. As he once described his fascination, in words that could equally describe his own aesthetic, 'Morandi paints like no other, before or since. His brushstroke is in complete philosophical agreement with the subject, the scale and the colour of his paintings. It is expressive, though it is modest, and not so expressionistic as to disturb the sense of meditative silence that inhabits all his works' (S. Scully, 'Giorgio Morandi: Resistance and Persistence', Sean Scully: Resistance and Persistence: Selected Writings, London 2006, p. 15).
In 1969, Scully travelled to Morocco and became captivated by the sights he discovered there: the strips of colour-dyed wool hanging up to dry, the rich carpets and tents, the faded and fragmented facades of buildings he photographed. In 1972 he was awarded a scholarship to Harvard and soon after devoted himself exclusively to abstraction. At first his approach was informed by Minimalism's brand of formal purism but by the early 1980s he came to the conclusion that 'the Minimalists [had] removed the content from Abstract Expressionism. Accordingly art reached the point where it had lost its ability to communicate'; a function and capacity for art which he now deems fundamental (S. Kleine, 'The Imagery of Sean Scully', Constantinople or the Sensual Concealed. The Imagery of Sean Scully, exh. cat., MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisberg, 2009, p. 18). In 1975, Scully moved to New York, establishing his studio in the city and becoming an American citizen in 1983. Scully's paintings have always been deeply influenced by his visual experiences and in Black White White, the allusion to brickwork or the urban configuration of his adoptive city is apparent in the elegant blocks of his composition.