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Lot Essay
'Paint strokes do a number of things, but they do not simply describe the form in my work: they affirm the human spirit, the involvement of the human spirit'
(S. Scully, Resistance and Persistence: Selected Writings, London 2006, p.25).
Painted in 1984, the same year as his inclusion in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, exhibition, Shadowing by Sean Scully was executed at a key moment in the artist's career when he began to develop his signature style of broad brushstrokes, thick with painterly lines. A band of three ochre and jet black horizontal stripes across the top canvas crash and collide with five crimson and inky black vertical stripes of the canvas underneath, building up a theatre of tension within the painting. This planar quality dictates a hierarchy of power between the two canvases and serves to disrupt the unity of the painting. Divided yet whole, at once ordered and disordered, even the paint operates in this struggle seeming both opaque yet creamy and translucent as the different layers of paint strain to come to the foreground creating an almost vibrating aesthetic. The brushstrokes are defiant and intentional in their domination of the canvas, yet void of the makers mark. The compositional economy of the piece is achieved through a single set of forms and a minimalist palette but simplicity of composition does not stop the painting from generating evocative power. Executed in the artist's signature style, similar works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and led him to be nominated twice for the Turner Prize in 1989 and 1993.
The structural composition, created by overlapping but related segments, is informed by the artist's experiences on a trip to Morocco in the early 1980s. As the artist recalled in a letter to David Carrier, 'I was always very moved by the way material of carpets lay around partially covering each other in stores. That's what happens in Morocco. The most outrageous formal relationships are being constantly produced and destroyed in the market places through casual or informal picking up and putting down of blankets and carpets...' (S. Scully in a letter to David Carrier, quoted in D.Carrier, 'Sean Scully. The Painter of Modern Life', Sean Scully, exh. cat., Villa delle Rose, Bologna, 31st March - 1st September 1996, p. 21). Demonstrating the expressive potential of abstraction, he conflates vertical and horizontal stripes on a hand drawn grid creating a pattern of gesture. Scully's use of the stripe is not without art historical precedent, citing the rapid brushstrokes of Vincent Van Gogh's Chair (1888) and the repetitive monotony of works by Giorgio Morandi as those who had the greatest influence on his aesthetic. The reductivist concept of horizontal and vertical stripes offers an unsettling, complex, emotional potential with the almost meditative nature of repetition. Speaking of this practice, the artist has said 'paint strokes do a number of things, but they do not simply describe the form in my work: they affirm the human spirit, the involvement of the human spirit' (S. Scully, Resistance and Persistence: Selected Writings, London 2006, p.25).
(S. Scully, Resistance and Persistence: Selected Writings, London 2006, p.25).
Painted in 1984, the same year as his inclusion in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, exhibition, Shadowing by Sean Scully was executed at a key moment in the artist's career when he began to develop his signature style of broad brushstrokes, thick with painterly lines. A band of three ochre and jet black horizontal stripes across the top canvas crash and collide with five crimson and inky black vertical stripes of the canvas underneath, building up a theatre of tension within the painting. This planar quality dictates a hierarchy of power between the two canvases and serves to disrupt the unity of the painting. Divided yet whole, at once ordered and disordered, even the paint operates in this struggle seeming both opaque yet creamy and translucent as the different layers of paint strain to come to the foreground creating an almost vibrating aesthetic. The brushstrokes are defiant and intentional in their domination of the canvas, yet void of the makers mark. The compositional economy of the piece is achieved through a single set of forms and a minimalist palette but simplicity of composition does not stop the painting from generating evocative power. Executed in the artist's signature style, similar works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and led him to be nominated twice for the Turner Prize in 1989 and 1993.
The structural composition, created by overlapping but related segments, is informed by the artist's experiences on a trip to Morocco in the early 1980s. As the artist recalled in a letter to David Carrier, 'I was always very moved by the way material of carpets lay around partially covering each other in stores. That's what happens in Morocco. The most outrageous formal relationships are being constantly produced and destroyed in the market places through casual or informal picking up and putting down of blankets and carpets...' (S. Scully in a letter to David Carrier, quoted in D.Carrier, 'Sean Scully. The Painter of Modern Life', Sean Scully, exh. cat., Villa delle Rose, Bologna, 31st March - 1st September 1996, p. 21). Demonstrating the expressive potential of abstraction, he conflates vertical and horizontal stripes on a hand drawn grid creating a pattern of gesture. Scully's use of the stripe is not without art historical precedent, citing the rapid brushstrokes of Vincent Van Gogh's Chair (1888) and the repetitive monotony of works by Giorgio Morandi as those who had the greatest influence on his aesthetic. The reductivist concept of horizontal and vertical stripes offers an unsettling, complex, emotional potential with the almost meditative nature of repetition. Speaking of this practice, the artist has said 'paint strokes do a number of things, but they do not simply describe the form in my work: they affirm the human spirit, the involvement of the human spirit' (S. Scully, Resistance and Persistence: Selected Writings, London 2006, p.25).