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Lot Essay
‘Behind the façade of pots and pans there is sometimes another image – it’s a private one, ambiguous, and can perhaps be sensed rather than seen. This image which I can’t describe animates my forms. It’s the secret in the picture.’
-William Scott
‘To have a too clearly conceived idea before beginning a work is for me a constriction; it is in the act of making that the subject takes form, it is in the adding, stretching, taking away and searching for the right and exact statement that a tension is set up.’
-William Scott
Following several years working in a distinctly abstract vein, William Scott turned once again to the theme of the still-life in the mid-1950s, filling his compositions with the familiar, robust shapes of pots, pans, fruit and cutlery. His decision to revisit the figurative in his art was, rather unexpectedly, driven by his encounters with the Abstract Expressionists in New York during the summer of 1953. Scott had travelled to the city following a brief teaching post at the Banff School of Fine Arts in Canada, where he came into contact with Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline. Struck by the bold scale and audacity of their paintings, and yet equally seduced by the directness and immediacy of their technique, Scott was left questioning the direction of his own art. As he explained: ‘My experience in America gave me a determination to re-paint much that I had left unfinished in terms of the symbolic still life. With the example of Ben Nicholson, whom I much admired, there was no reason for me to be devoted solely to abstraction and I embarked on a process of rediscovery’ (W. Scott, quoted in S. Whitfield, William Scott, London 2013, p. 43).
Painted in 1955, White and Black Pots on White Table exemplifies this renewed focus on figuration in Scott’s work, as still-life once again became the primary occupation of his art. The familiar motif of the white saucepan with an upturned lid occupies the centre of the composition, flanked by a small black pot on one side, and a sharp knife on the other, its edge pointing directly towards the saucepan, as if it is about to pierce its side. Adopting a tight, close-up view that hovers just above the surface of the table-top, Scott imbues each of these everyday kitchen utensils with a monumentality and presence that belies their modesty, while the distribution of space between the objects creates a palpable tension between them, at once suggestive and mysterious.
Executed in bold, visceral brushstrokes, the richly worked surface of the composition also reveals Scott’s growing fascination with the very act of painting itself, adding layers upon layers of loosely brushed paint to create a highly sensual finish. As Scott explained: ‘The actual touch and the way I put paint on canvas matter very much. I am extremely interested in textural qualities – the thick paint, the thin paint, the scratched lines, that almost careful-careless way in which a picture’s painted…’ (W. Scott, quoted in D. Anfam, William Scott, exh. cat., McCaffrey Fine Art, New York 2010, p. 11). As such, the subject of paintings like White and Black Pots on White Table no longer lay in the objects alone; rather their forms became a vehicle for Scott, a means of exploring texture and finish, tonal contrasts and tensions in his art, as he sought to push the traditional still-life subject to new expressive heights.
-William Scott
‘To have a too clearly conceived idea before beginning a work is for me a constriction; it is in the act of making that the subject takes form, it is in the adding, stretching, taking away and searching for the right and exact statement that a tension is set up.’
-William Scott
Following several years working in a distinctly abstract vein, William Scott turned once again to the theme of the still-life in the mid-1950s, filling his compositions with the familiar, robust shapes of pots, pans, fruit and cutlery. His decision to revisit the figurative in his art was, rather unexpectedly, driven by his encounters with the Abstract Expressionists in New York during the summer of 1953. Scott had travelled to the city following a brief teaching post at the Banff School of Fine Arts in Canada, where he came into contact with Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline. Struck by the bold scale and audacity of their paintings, and yet equally seduced by the directness and immediacy of their technique, Scott was left questioning the direction of his own art. As he explained: ‘My experience in America gave me a determination to re-paint much that I had left unfinished in terms of the symbolic still life. With the example of Ben Nicholson, whom I much admired, there was no reason for me to be devoted solely to abstraction and I embarked on a process of rediscovery’ (W. Scott, quoted in S. Whitfield, William Scott, London 2013, p. 43).
Painted in 1955, White and Black Pots on White Table exemplifies this renewed focus on figuration in Scott’s work, as still-life once again became the primary occupation of his art. The familiar motif of the white saucepan with an upturned lid occupies the centre of the composition, flanked by a small black pot on one side, and a sharp knife on the other, its edge pointing directly towards the saucepan, as if it is about to pierce its side. Adopting a tight, close-up view that hovers just above the surface of the table-top, Scott imbues each of these everyday kitchen utensils with a monumentality and presence that belies their modesty, while the distribution of space between the objects creates a palpable tension between them, at once suggestive and mysterious.
Executed in bold, visceral brushstrokes, the richly worked surface of the composition also reveals Scott’s growing fascination with the very act of painting itself, adding layers upon layers of loosely brushed paint to create a highly sensual finish. As Scott explained: ‘The actual touch and the way I put paint on canvas matter very much. I am extremely interested in textural qualities – the thick paint, the thin paint, the scratched lines, that almost careful-careless way in which a picture’s painted…’ (W. Scott, quoted in D. Anfam, William Scott, exh. cat., McCaffrey Fine Art, New York 2010, p. 11). As such, the subject of paintings like White and Black Pots on White Table no longer lay in the objects alone; rather their forms became a vehicle for Scott, a means of exploring texture and finish, tonal contrasts and tensions in his art, as he sought to push the traditional still-life subject to new expressive heights.