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Lot Essay
'Abstraction is the art of our age; it’s a breaking down of certain structures, an opening up. It allows you to think without making obsessively specific references, so that the viewer is free to identify with the work. Abstract art has the possibility of being incredibly generous, really out there for everybody. It’s a non-denominational religious art. I think it’s the spiritual art of our time' (S. Scully, quoted in ‘Some Basic Principles,’ B. Kennedy, exhibition catalogue, Sean Scully: The Art of the Stripe, Hanover, 2008, p. 13).
Dominated by fields of warm terracotta and vivid golden yellows, the heat of Iris is beautifully tempered by planes of deep black, and shimmering umbers. The painting is a mediation on light and shadow in a two-dimensional field. Each panel is a self-contained unit, a Rothko-esque homage to colour, whilst the work as a whole is a study of the effects of light. The softness of the central twin blocks anchors the vibrant composition, around a central opening line that splits the canvas in the style of Barnett Newman. Dark panels bring their neighbours to life as they recede into the depths of the wall and brighter portions radiate in the foreground.
Sean Scully's Wall of Light series is among his most important and extensive bodies in his oeuvre. Scully sets aside the multi-panel constructions and visual hierarchies of his earlier paintings, in favour of unified interlocking units of colour that blaze with vitality. The genesis of the series occurred during a visit to Mexico in 1983-84, where Scully became obsessed by the play of light on the ancient Mayan ruins of Yucatán. He painted several small watercolours inspired by the roughly stacked stones at the time, but it was not until 1998 that he began to use the more organic, less formulaic approach in the Wall of Light series. He broadened his palette and softened the edges of his brush strokes, whilst his familiar straps and stripes were transformed into 'bricks' of colour.
'I have always been deeply attracted to a sense of structure. Another monumental influence for me would be Cézanne, whose work is heroic. He is a builder of paintings; he said that all he had was his little thrill. And this, in a sense, is all I have. I go to the mountain, as he did, again and again, and I am driven by love and feeling' (Sean Scully interviewed by Kevin Power, Valencia, 2002).
Scully’s surfaces are built up from carefully constructed layers of paint. He sets out by carefully drafting his composition in oil-stick or pencil; colours are blocked in with great sweeps, before he intensely scrutinises the surface; he continuously adds and removes layers of paint, dragging fresh pigments through the wet oil. In this way, any given passage may change dramatically until the artist is satisfied with both the surface tone and the complexity of the colour and surface. This repetitious process is evident in Iris, as its rich depth allows the residues of numerous painterly layers to float and recede from the surface. Cool dark pools of paint coexist with the paler warmer pigments, whilst slivers of molten gold and copper dance between the passages; the result is a remarkably rich and nuanced painterly surface.
Reconciling geometric precision with subjective emotionalism has been a dominant subject for Scully throughout his career. His paintings of the mid 70s such as lot 13, show a cool minimalism that gradually transforms into a looser, more painterly style in the 80s. The stripe is both the subject and the architectonic device of the paintings, simultaneously form and content, in its allusion to the seriality and repetition of contemporary life.
‘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, quoted in W. Smerling, ‘Constantinople or the Sensual Concealed,’ in exhibition catalogue, The Imagery of Sean Scully, Duisburg, MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, 2009, p. 8).
Dominated by fields of warm terracotta and vivid golden yellows, the heat of Iris is beautifully tempered by planes of deep black, and shimmering umbers. The painting is a mediation on light and shadow in a two-dimensional field. Each panel is a self-contained unit, a Rothko-esque homage to colour, whilst the work as a whole is a study of the effects of light. The softness of the central twin blocks anchors the vibrant composition, around a central opening line that splits the canvas in the style of Barnett Newman. Dark panels bring their neighbours to life as they recede into the depths of the wall and brighter portions radiate in the foreground.
Sean Scully's Wall of Light series is among his most important and extensive bodies in his oeuvre. Scully sets aside the multi-panel constructions and visual hierarchies of his earlier paintings, in favour of unified interlocking units of colour that blaze with vitality. The genesis of the series occurred during a visit to Mexico in 1983-84, where Scully became obsessed by the play of light on the ancient Mayan ruins of Yucatán. He painted several small watercolours inspired by the roughly stacked stones at the time, but it was not until 1998 that he began to use the more organic, less formulaic approach in the Wall of Light series. He broadened his palette and softened the edges of his brush strokes, whilst his familiar straps and stripes were transformed into 'bricks' of colour.
'I have always been deeply attracted to a sense of structure. Another monumental influence for me would be Cézanne, whose work is heroic. He is a builder of paintings; he said that all he had was his little thrill. And this, in a sense, is all I have. I go to the mountain, as he did, again and again, and I am driven by love and feeling' (Sean Scully interviewed by Kevin Power, Valencia, 2002).
Scully’s surfaces are built up from carefully constructed layers of paint. He sets out by carefully drafting his composition in oil-stick or pencil; colours are blocked in with great sweeps, before he intensely scrutinises the surface; he continuously adds and removes layers of paint, dragging fresh pigments through the wet oil. In this way, any given passage may change dramatically until the artist is satisfied with both the surface tone and the complexity of the colour and surface. This repetitious process is evident in Iris, as its rich depth allows the residues of numerous painterly layers to float and recede from the surface. Cool dark pools of paint coexist with the paler warmer pigments, whilst slivers of molten gold and copper dance between the passages; the result is a remarkably rich and nuanced painterly surface.
Reconciling geometric precision with subjective emotionalism has been a dominant subject for Scully throughout his career. His paintings of the mid 70s such as lot 13, show a cool minimalism that gradually transforms into a looser, more painterly style in the 80s. The stripe is both the subject and the architectonic device of the paintings, simultaneously form and content, in its allusion to the seriality and repetition of contemporary life.
‘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, quoted in W. Smerling, ‘Constantinople or the Sensual Concealed,’ in exhibition catalogue, The Imagery of Sean Scully, Duisburg, MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, 2009, p. 8).