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Lot Essay
Painted in 2000, Wall of Light Stone is a monumental painting from the artist's Wall of Light series, employing the celebrated configuration of stripes that have become the artist's hallmark. It recalls the legacy of post-War abstraction through its geometric vocabulary of painted rectangles in soft, mesmerising colours of beige, black, white and grey. In this period of the artist's career, he was seeking to express the quality of light. As Kleine has noted, in these works the paint surfaces 'radiate an astonishing softness of structure, furnishing evidence of Scully's unwaveringly positive attitude to life, despite his acknowledgement of the negative... and reveal to us how the warm colours shake off their gravity to become ever brighter' (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. 24). Unlike those Minimalist alloy squares by Carl Andre or Donald Judd's industrial series, Wall of Light Stone celebrates the expressive potential of abstraction, the artist's freely gestured application of paint heightening the work's emotional timbre. In Wall of Light Stone Scully uses fluid, transparent and highly varied brushstrokes 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.
Scully's paintings have always been deeply influenced by his visual experiences. As the artist has explained: 'I see something, and have a feeling of something - it might be light, or the heat, they are very specific in that sense - and I unload the painting' (S. Scully, 'The Phillips Collection Lecture', F. Ingleby (ed.), Sean Scully: Resistance and Persistence: Selected Writings, London 2006, p. 179). In Wall of Light Stone the allusion to brickwork or the urban configuration of his adoptive city New York is apparent in the elegant blocks of his composition. 'When you see a building' Scully once suggested, 'it is the front of the building you are meant to see, but I am more interested in the back of it, because that is what you are not meant to see. These paintings are being constantly emotionally unraveled by what is at the back' (S. Scully, 'The Phillips Collection Lecture', F. Ingleby (ed.), Sean Scully: Resistance and Persistence: Selected Writings, London 2006, p. 181). In the present work, the artist has worked over numerous surfaces so that traces of antecedent colour shine up from below.
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. 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 Wall of Light Stone. 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 traveled 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' (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); a function and capacity for art which he now deems fundamental.
In Wall of Light Stone, 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's paintings have always been deeply influenced by his visual experiences. As the artist has explained: 'I see something, and have a feeling of something - it might be light, or the heat, they are very specific in that sense - and I unload the painting' (S. Scully, 'The Phillips Collection Lecture', F. Ingleby (ed.), Sean Scully: Resistance and Persistence: Selected Writings, London 2006, p. 179). In Wall of Light Stone the allusion to brickwork or the urban configuration of his adoptive city New York is apparent in the elegant blocks of his composition. 'When you see a building' Scully once suggested, 'it is the front of the building you are meant to see, but I am more interested in the back of it, because that is what you are not meant to see. These paintings are being constantly emotionally unraveled by what is at the back' (S. Scully, 'The Phillips Collection Lecture', F. Ingleby (ed.), Sean Scully: Resistance and Persistence: Selected Writings, London 2006, p. 181). In the present work, the artist has worked over numerous surfaces so that traces of antecedent colour shine up from below.
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. 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 Wall of Light Stone. 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 traveled 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' (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); a function and capacity for art which he now deems fundamental.
In Wall of Light Stone, 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).