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Lot Essay
‘... the major goal of my art is that play between rhythm, the inner rhythm of things … It is something which keeps us alive, and it becomes more vital as the world continues on its merry side … I would like my work … to speak through the universal language of rhythm. Rhythm communicates in a primal way, directly and through feeling’ —S. SCULLY
‘Sean approaches the canvas like a kickboxer, a plasterer, a builder. The quantity of paint screams of a life being lived’ —BONO
Distinguished by its alternating passages of light and dark pigment, Passenger Yellow Grey is a treatise on the spiritual nature of colour and abstraction. By taking its bands of warm yellow and golden taupe interspersed with inky black and slate grey, Scully investigates the physical and chromatic possibilities of colour. Tones that are normally conceived of as opposites—dark and light, warm and cold—are woven together to temper any perceived extremes. Physically Passenger Yellow Grey is a painting within a painting, as the central portion is a separate canvas which is subsumed perfectly by the surrounding support. This gives the work a sculptural strength that enhances its already powerful presence. In addition, the painted surface is meticulously constructed as Scully builds up his painterly layers. First he marks out the wide bands in oil-stick, then—often painting vertically (as opposed to the finished horizontal configuration)—he fills in these passages with oil paint applied with a wide brush, of the type often used by house-painters. Next, Scully begins a process of intense scrutiny of the surface in which he continuously adds and removes (often with the help of sandpaper or the flat edge of a small artist’s trowel) layers of paint before adding new layers in different colours. During this process the chromatic make-up of the painting can change dramatically, with the same band sometimes going from dark to light with several iterations in between. Evidence of this exhaustive process can be seen across the entire surface of Passenger Yellow Grey as its pearlescent, almost luminous, appearance allows the vestiges of the numerous painterly layers to break through to the surface. Dark pools of paint coexist next to veils of paler pigment, separated only by the tiniest slivers of red which push through as reminders of a previous painterly layer. The result is a remarkably rich and nuanced painterly surface.
Scully is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished artists working today. His international reputation has been bolstered by a series of critically acclaimed international retrospectives in countries as diverse as China, the United Kingdom, Spain, South Korea and the United States. According to the New York Times many of his collectors, including collector and founder of the Broad in Los Angeles, Eli Broad and singer Bono admire Scully’s combination of emotion and technique, with the Irish singer commenting, ‘Sean approaches the canvas like a kickboxer, a plasterer, a builder. The quantity of paint screams of a life being lived’ (Bono, quoted in R. Sharp, ‘Sean Scully Fills a Spanish Monastery With Bursts of Color,’ The New York Times, 30 June 2015).
Scully has frequently acknowledged the influence of painters like Henri Matisse and Mark Rothko in helping him to understand the spiritual nature of colour. He has expressed a particular indebtedness to Matisse, especially the effects of the French master’s trips to Morocco in helping him understand the nature of light and how it affects color—even making a BBC documentary on the subject in 1992. The warm sunlight that filters through the downturned blinds in Odalisque, 1925 (Museo del Novecento, Milan) invites direct comparison with Passenger Yellow Grey. But it is the work of Mark Rothko that has perhaps had the greatest influence on Scully’s career. Scully first encountered Rothko’s work in his early twenties while he was still in art school, when he saw an exhibition of the artist’s work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was after this encounter that Scully abandoned figurative painting altogether and, like Rothko, began to focus on the interplay of overlapping passages of contrasting colour, something which stemmed from a transcendent understanding of the power of paint. ‘My paintings talk of relationships,’ Scully once said. ‘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, quoted in W. Smerling, ‘Constantinople or the Sensual Concealed,’ in The Imagery of Sean Scully, exh. cat. MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisburg 2009, p. 8).
‘Sean approaches the canvas like a kickboxer, a plasterer, a builder. The quantity of paint screams of a life being lived’ —BONO
Distinguished by its alternating passages of light and dark pigment, Passenger Yellow Grey is a treatise on the spiritual nature of colour and abstraction. By taking its bands of warm yellow and golden taupe interspersed with inky black and slate grey, Scully investigates the physical and chromatic possibilities of colour. Tones that are normally conceived of as opposites—dark and light, warm and cold—are woven together to temper any perceived extremes. Physically Passenger Yellow Grey is a painting within a painting, as the central portion is a separate canvas which is subsumed perfectly by the surrounding support. This gives the work a sculptural strength that enhances its already powerful presence. In addition, the painted surface is meticulously constructed as Scully builds up his painterly layers. First he marks out the wide bands in oil-stick, then—often painting vertically (as opposed to the finished horizontal configuration)—he fills in these passages with oil paint applied with a wide brush, of the type often used by house-painters. Next, Scully begins a process of intense scrutiny of the surface in which he continuously adds and removes (often with the help of sandpaper or the flat edge of a small artist’s trowel) layers of paint before adding new layers in different colours. During this process the chromatic make-up of the painting can change dramatically, with the same band sometimes going from dark to light with several iterations in between. Evidence of this exhaustive process can be seen across the entire surface of Passenger Yellow Grey as its pearlescent, almost luminous, appearance allows the vestiges of the numerous painterly layers to break through to the surface. Dark pools of paint coexist next to veils of paler pigment, separated only by the tiniest slivers of red which push through as reminders of a previous painterly layer. The result is a remarkably rich and nuanced painterly surface.
Scully is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished artists working today. His international reputation has been bolstered by a series of critically acclaimed international retrospectives in countries as diverse as China, the United Kingdom, Spain, South Korea and the United States. According to the New York Times many of his collectors, including collector and founder of the Broad in Los Angeles, Eli Broad and singer Bono admire Scully’s combination of emotion and technique, with the Irish singer commenting, ‘Sean approaches the canvas like a kickboxer, a plasterer, a builder. The quantity of paint screams of a life being lived’ (Bono, quoted in R. Sharp, ‘Sean Scully Fills a Spanish Monastery With Bursts of Color,’ The New York Times, 30 June 2015).
Scully has frequently acknowledged the influence of painters like Henri Matisse and Mark Rothko in helping him to understand the spiritual nature of colour. He has expressed a particular indebtedness to Matisse, especially the effects of the French master’s trips to Morocco in helping him understand the nature of light and how it affects color—even making a BBC documentary on the subject in 1992. The warm sunlight that filters through the downturned blinds in Odalisque, 1925 (Museo del Novecento, Milan) invites direct comparison with Passenger Yellow Grey. But it is the work of Mark Rothko that has perhaps had the greatest influence on Scully’s career. Scully first encountered Rothko’s work in his early twenties while he was still in art school, when he saw an exhibition of the artist’s work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was after this encounter that Scully abandoned figurative painting altogether and, like Rothko, began to focus on the interplay of overlapping passages of contrasting colour, something which stemmed from a transcendent understanding of the power of paint. ‘My paintings talk of relationships,’ Scully once said. ‘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, quoted in W. Smerling, ‘Constantinople or the Sensual Concealed,’ in The Imagery of Sean Scully, exh. cat. MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisburg 2009, p. 8).