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Lot Essay
“The Landlines…are closer to eternity, in the sense that they’re closer to Nature, or the eternal horizon line. This is all we’ve got, really, to measure ourselves against, if we are looking at the immensity of the ocean and ourselves as individuals.” Sean Scully
Sea, sky, and land with all of their different hues blend together in Landline Magenta Green Sea, the exquisite work by the Irish-American artist Sean Scully. The present lot seems to encapsulate the vision of the artist, made of sublime abstraction, art-historical references, and pathos – the very elements which make Scully one of the most profoundly influential painters of our age.
Painted on a large-format aluminum panel, seven colored bands characterize the work. While the red and the orange bands seem to evoke the warmth and brightness of the sun, the insertion of an opaque mustard horizontal band brings the painting an earthly dimension, likening it to the land and natural elements like sand or soil. Likewise, the presence of two varieties of blue, and a darker hue of mauve in the upper part of the painting, recall distant memories of summer nights, fresh marine breezes, and hours spent looking at the sea. Indeed, Landline Magenta Green Sea was directly inspired by Scully’s return to Ireland in 2013, when looking out at the sea he “saw the layers of the world pressed into the space before him, forming the strata that would become characteristic of this series.” (M. Chiu in Sean Scully: Landline, Washington D.C, 2018, p. 11). The sea has been a powerful source of inspiration for the artist since 1999, captured in the many photos he took while in Norfolk, England, which clearly synthetase the landscape as a homogenous amalgam of horizontal bands.
Scully’s abstract and meditative approach to landscape can be further elucidated when viewing the artist’s photographs of the Irish coastline, such as Land, Sea, Sky. Starting with an image such as this one, the artist fused “the natural landscape and the abstract in a new way” in creating Landline Magenta Green Sea ( P. Hickson, “Land Sea Sky” in Sean Scully: Landline, Washington D.C, 2018, p. 11). Moving away from the rigid minimalist-inspired compositions of his early paintings, as well as of the grid-structured geometries typical of the 1970s and clearly influenced by Piet Mondrian's rigorous compositions, Scully’s work has developed with the Landline series to embrace some of the freedom of Pollock’s dripping while simultaneously reaching Mark Rothko’s spirituality. Therefore, the work reflects the artist’s primary issue of “reconciling Mondrian and Pollock” (M. Frehner, Sean Scully. Retrospektive, Bern, 2012, p. 22), but on the other hand it exemplifies Abstract Expressionism's pure influence on Scully, who according to the influential critic Arthur Danto “has discovered a style of painting in which Abstract Expressionism continues to exist, but the architecture of his paintings belongs entirely to the present moment” (A. Danto, Danto on Scully, 2015, p. 62).
Scully’s characteristic overlapping of horizontal bands as a stand-in for colorful memories of an experienced landscape intensified on the occasion of the artist's participation in the 56th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia in 2015, when he witnessed the water flowing through the city of Venice. Moreover, direct references to the Italian Renaissance, and particularly to Venetian colorists like Titian and Veronese, were pinpointed by the artist himself: “I’ve looked at them adoringly for so many hours, and I’ve absorbed all their lessons” (S. Scully, quoted in R. Catlin, ‘Sean Scully’s Artworks are a Study in Colour, Horizon and Life’s Sorrows’, Smithsonian Magazine, 20 September 2018).
Landline Magenta Green Sea is a particularly exemplary work from the artist’s oeuvre; the composition comes together to reconcile the artist's diverse influences, resulting in a painting that stands as mesmerizing proof of Scully’s artistic genius. With Landline Magenta Green Sea, we take a leap with the artist toward a more emotional, spiritual landscape – the landscape of our own individual minds.
Sea, sky, and land with all of their different hues blend together in Landline Magenta Green Sea, the exquisite work by the Irish-American artist Sean Scully. The present lot seems to encapsulate the vision of the artist, made of sublime abstraction, art-historical references, and pathos – the very elements which make Scully one of the most profoundly influential painters of our age.
Painted on a large-format aluminum panel, seven colored bands characterize the work. While the red and the orange bands seem to evoke the warmth and brightness of the sun, the insertion of an opaque mustard horizontal band brings the painting an earthly dimension, likening it to the land and natural elements like sand or soil. Likewise, the presence of two varieties of blue, and a darker hue of mauve in the upper part of the painting, recall distant memories of summer nights, fresh marine breezes, and hours spent looking at the sea. Indeed, Landline Magenta Green Sea was directly inspired by Scully’s return to Ireland in 2013, when looking out at the sea he “saw the layers of the world pressed into the space before him, forming the strata that would become characteristic of this series.” (M. Chiu in Sean Scully: Landline, Washington D.C, 2018, p. 11). The sea has been a powerful source of inspiration for the artist since 1999, captured in the many photos he took while in Norfolk, England, which clearly synthetase the landscape as a homogenous amalgam of horizontal bands.
Scully’s abstract and meditative approach to landscape can be further elucidated when viewing the artist’s photographs of the Irish coastline, such as Land, Sea, Sky. Starting with an image such as this one, the artist fused “the natural landscape and the abstract in a new way” in creating Landline Magenta Green Sea ( P. Hickson, “Land Sea Sky” in Sean Scully: Landline, Washington D.C, 2018, p. 11). Moving away from the rigid minimalist-inspired compositions of his early paintings, as well as of the grid-structured geometries typical of the 1970s and clearly influenced by Piet Mondrian's rigorous compositions, Scully’s work has developed with the Landline series to embrace some of the freedom of Pollock’s dripping while simultaneously reaching Mark Rothko’s spirituality. Therefore, the work reflects the artist’s primary issue of “reconciling Mondrian and Pollock” (M. Frehner, Sean Scully. Retrospektive, Bern, 2012, p. 22), but on the other hand it exemplifies Abstract Expressionism's pure influence on Scully, who according to the influential critic Arthur Danto “has discovered a style of painting in which Abstract Expressionism continues to exist, but the architecture of his paintings belongs entirely to the present moment” (A. Danto, Danto on Scully, 2015, p. 62).
Scully’s characteristic overlapping of horizontal bands as a stand-in for colorful memories of an experienced landscape intensified on the occasion of the artist's participation in the 56th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia in 2015, when he witnessed the water flowing through the city of Venice. Moreover, direct references to the Italian Renaissance, and particularly to Venetian colorists like Titian and Veronese, were pinpointed by the artist himself: “I’ve looked at them adoringly for so many hours, and I’ve absorbed all their lessons” (S. Scully, quoted in R. Catlin, ‘Sean Scully’s Artworks are a Study in Colour, Horizon and Life’s Sorrows’, Smithsonian Magazine, 20 September 2018).
Landline Magenta Green Sea is a particularly exemplary work from the artist’s oeuvre; the composition comes together to reconcile the artist's diverse influences, resulting in a painting that stands as mesmerizing proof of Scully’s artistic genius. With Landline Magenta Green Sea, we take a leap with the artist toward a more emotional, spiritual landscape – the landscape of our own individual minds.