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Lot Essay
‘Abstraction’s the art of our age… it’s a breaking down of certain structures, an opening up. It allows you to think without making oppressively specific references, so that the viewer is free to identify with the work… It’s a non-denominational religious art. I think it’s the spiritual art of our time.’ SEAN SCULLY
An energised exchange between painted content and geometrically irregular support, Sean Scully’s Masai is a prime example of the artist’s exploration of medium, abstraction and perceptual subjectivity. A quartet of unflushed canvases house a rhythmical composition of horizontal stripes, the red bands burning alternately against a muddy ground. The smeared, spirited and spontaneous application of red pigment has been applied using house-painters’ brushes, exposing the underpainting; the rapid fusion of colours causes the whole painted mass to throb and vibrate. This characteristic is furthered by the off-kilter, confusing imbalance of the tripartite canvas structure. Challenging perceptual limitations from multiple viewpoints, these fabricated canvases seem to undulate in space, offset by their contained painted matter, open to subjective visceral reinterpretations. Each work by Scully has a unique character, but Masai derives from a period dictated by emotional, expressive responses to chromatics, composition and tonality. A cathartic work that encourages self-reflection in the face of inevitable adversities, Masai’s dramatic, thick lines visually metaphorize his proclamation that ‘as I’ve gotten older, I’ve just taken on more of the weight of things, the tragedy of things… I’m just inhabited by it’ (S. Scully, quoted in Sean Scully: The Art of the Stripe, exh. cat., Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, New Hampshire, 2008, p. 44). Simultaneously, this highly idiosyncratic response to geometrical form opposes the clinical neatness favoured by the practitioners of Op Art, further initiated by Scully’s rejection of acrylic paint, something that he denounced as having ‘no surface interest, no physical interest, no body interest’ (ibid. p. 37).
Whilst instantly evoking the striped paintings of Daniel Buren, Gene Davis and Frank Stella, Scully’s refusal to conform to the linearity of modernism undermines its intentions. Rather, he sees his work as a vehicle for human expression, subjective experience that transcends any lineal momentum of modernist negation and ontological objecthood. With no immediate meaning – and thus open to infinite subjective resonances and everlasting relevance – the stripe is Scully’s ‘signifier for modernism’, a trigger for socio-cultural identity that aspires towards internationalism. The stripe belongs to a universal visual vocabulary, appropriated by the world’s flags and global fashion. But Scully subverts this knowledge by hybridising abstract form with colour in his work to extract deep, individualised responses from prospective viewers. A further dimension is integrated by the carefully selected title of each work, which hint at a chromatic figuration beneath the seeming abstraction. In this instance, Masai may refer to the Masai, a Nilotic ethnic group from Kenya and Tanzania, often apparelled in rich, blood-red garments. But ultimately, these works encapsulate an appeal for human experience, subjectivity and perception. Commenting on the pseudo-metaphysical quality of Scully’s painting, Armin Zweite championed the way they interact with the viewer’s emotional core, and thus ‘endow geometry with a human aspect… to incorporate in his pictures a reaction, albeit of a highly indirect kind, to the realities of the city, of nature, of the individual and society… he sees the [striped] motif as capable of functioning as a metaphorical expression of social reality’ (A. Zweite, ‘To Humanize Abstract Painting: Reflections on Sean Scully’s “Stone Light”’, in Sean Scully: Twenty Years, 1976-1995, exh. cat., High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 1995, p. 22).
An energised exchange between painted content and geometrically irregular support, Sean Scully’s Masai is a prime example of the artist’s exploration of medium, abstraction and perceptual subjectivity. A quartet of unflushed canvases house a rhythmical composition of horizontal stripes, the red bands burning alternately against a muddy ground. The smeared, spirited and spontaneous application of red pigment has been applied using house-painters’ brushes, exposing the underpainting; the rapid fusion of colours causes the whole painted mass to throb and vibrate. This characteristic is furthered by the off-kilter, confusing imbalance of the tripartite canvas structure. Challenging perceptual limitations from multiple viewpoints, these fabricated canvases seem to undulate in space, offset by their contained painted matter, open to subjective visceral reinterpretations. Each work by Scully has a unique character, but Masai derives from a period dictated by emotional, expressive responses to chromatics, composition and tonality. A cathartic work that encourages self-reflection in the face of inevitable adversities, Masai’s dramatic, thick lines visually metaphorize his proclamation that ‘as I’ve gotten older, I’ve just taken on more of the weight of things, the tragedy of things… I’m just inhabited by it’ (S. Scully, quoted in Sean Scully: The Art of the Stripe, exh. cat., Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, New Hampshire, 2008, p. 44). Simultaneously, this highly idiosyncratic response to geometrical form opposes the clinical neatness favoured by the practitioners of Op Art, further initiated by Scully’s rejection of acrylic paint, something that he denounced as having ‘no surface interest, no physical interest, no body interest’ (ibid. p. 37).
Whilst instantly evoking the striped paintings of Daniel Buren, Gene Davis and Frank Stella, Scully’s refusal to conform to the linearity of modernism undermines its intentions. Rather, he sees his work as a vehicle for human expression, subjective experience that transcends any lineal momentum of modernist negation and ontological objecthood. With no immediate meaning – and thus open to infinite subjective resonances and everlasting relevance – the stripe is Scully’s ‘signifier for modernism’, a trigger for socio-cultural identity that aspires towards internationalism. The stripe belongs to a universal visual vocabulary, appropriated by the world’s flags and global fashion. But Scully subverts this knowledge by hybridising abstract form with colour in his work to extract deep, individualised responses from prospective viewers. A further dimension is integrated by the carefully selected title of each work, which hint at a chromatic figuration beneath the seeming abstraction. In this instance, Masai may refer to the Masai, a Nilotic ethnic group from Kenya and Tanzania, often apparelled in rich, blood-red garments. But ultimately, these works encapsulate an appeal for human experience, subjectivity and perception. Commenting on the pseudo-metaphysical quality of Scully’s painting, Armin Zweite championed the way they interact with the viewer’s emotional core, and thus ‘endow geometry with a human aspect… to incorporate in his pictures a reaction, albeit of a highly indirect kind, to the realities of the city, of nature, of the individual and society… he sees the [striped] motif as capable of functioning as a metaphorical expression of social reality’ (A. Zweite, ‘To Humanize Abstract Painting: Reflections on Sean Scully’s “Stone Light”’, in Sean Scully: Twenty Years, 1976-1995, exh. cat., High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 1995, p. 22).