New Art Thing That Follows, and That Comes from an Interest in Irish Music

Interview

Dr Mark Merrony, Director of the Musée d’Art Classique de Mougins, interviews the internationally renowned abstract artist Sean Scully in his Barcelona studio

How old were you when you first started to paint or draw? I was about six. While I was at a convent school I was very involved with things like Nativity plays and I used to make the scenery. I was always the school artist.

When you were at art school did you only paint abstract pictures? No. I started making very realistic drawings and I drew obsessively for the first couple of years. I produced a lot of beautiful drawings of friends, plants, animals, landscapes. I am showing them in Ireland and in Germany; there is going to be an exhibition that explains this story. I am one of the few artists knock- ing around now that made the tran- 1 sition from realism to abstraction.

What was it that steered you towards abstraction? I would say that the drive to abstraction is fundamental to every- Ancient order – new art thing that follows, and that comes from an interest in Irish music – I 1. Sean Scully in 1992, of gravitas and there is a kind of cardboard boxes, and I always was mean, that’s in my soul, and the standing in front of Doric order about them.’ That’s very fascinated by this idea of stack- idea of rhythm, the sense of rhythm, the Doric columns of when I first got the idea of making ing, and just being able to go up by that’s deep within me. The idea of one of the temples at a group of paintings called Doric stacking, which is what, in building universality has always been big in Agrigento in Sicily. Order – or referring to the sense terms, is called ‘post and linteling’. I me, and still is, and I don’t aban- of Doric order. But, before that, I have made 11 trips to Mexico, where 2. DORIC ORANGE, don that, even though we are in a a painting inspired by had visited the temples at Agrigento I visited practically every temple – period that is basically called post- the pale orange colour in Sicily. They are very beautiful. I Labna, Coba, Sayil, Tulum, Chichen modern. You can still make very of the stone of the loved the pale orange colour of the Itza of course, Uxmal – every site engaging abstraction – or I can any- temples at Agrigento. stone; one of my paintings is called except Bonampak, which is in the way – after the fall of modernism, DORIC ORANGE. Those temples jungle and a bit inaccessible. Those that’s not dependent on that context 3. The artist in his stand alone on an empty landscape temples are also built in that way, by or that matrix, or a belief in that. studio in Mooseurach, against the sea. You have there stacking. This idea of human stack- That said, fast-forwarding to a man in southern Germany, an architectural sense of eternity ing to create spaces in which we in 2003. To his right: in his mid-60s, having just talked Wall of Light Ice, against a body of water, poetically think and grow culture – spaces of about a man in his late teens, I had 2003, oil on linen, and geographically, or at least in contemplation – is very interesting. an idea to make these paintings that 90 x 72 inches our localised sense on planet Earth. came from a lot of things. (228.6 x182.9cm). This was of great interest to me. The legacy of ancient Greece is Public Collection: strongly present in your work. Is it How did the concept and theme Hilti Art Foundation, Did any other factors in your early a tribute to that great civilisation? of abstracting Doric architecture Schaan, Liechtenstein. life influence your work? I think about Greece and what develop in your work? To his left: Figure in The idea of standing things one on we owe the Greeks, and how per- Orange, 2004, oil on Once, when I did a film interview linen, 96 x 84 inches top of the other has always been sonally indebted I am to Greece. with the late Robert Hughes, the (243.8 x 213.4cm). of great interest to me, the idea I wanted to make something for greatest art writer of his genera- Private Collection. of stacking. When I was young I them. When I was thinking about tion by far, he said of my work: worked in Woolworth’s. I oper- it – not consciously thinking about ‘His paintings have a silent sense ated a baling-machine, baling old their current economic plight but

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Why do the Ionic and Corinthian philosophy. That’s what Western orders not inspire you? abstraction is based on. Of course, Because they are not fundamental – abstraction has been around for they are an elaboration built on the thousands of years. Our abstrac- Doric. I’m only interested in funda- tion was invented to accompany mental forms. Look at the paintings; the Russian Revolution. That is there are no twirly bits in my paint- what took hold with me, not the ings, no decoration, no elaboration. appearance of things, but the I make my paintings out of abso- meaning of things. That’s why lutely fundamental forms. I have no I converted from figuration to interest at all in the idea of elabora- abstraction, for political reasons, tion. It’s antithetical to what I do. because I was a fervent Left activ- ist. I believed in social order, social Aside from Greek architecture, do justice, I still do. I was attracted Ancient order – new art any other aspects of ancient Greek to abstraction because of that art strike a chord with you? and because of the way cities are perhaps subconsciously – in some No. This isn’t really about arte- built. My early work was based way I wanted to come to their res- facts. This is bigger than that. This on super-grids. I looked at the way cue as an artist, to speak up for is philosophical, and the subject highways overlapped, at the way them, to say this is what they gave of abstraction, once it left the fig- city blocks went up. I was react- us, this is what we stand in, this ure behind, or once it left behind ing to that, so my work has always is what we base everything on. the appearance of figures, became been urban in one way or another.

3 You work both in Barcelona and in New York City, but you also have a house out in the countryside in southern Germany. You have mentioned that, since living there, your paintings have acquired ‘a softness’. What did you mean? The first painting I produced when I moved to Germany was called Mooseurach, which is the name of the little village where I live. It was a painting with green in it. Green is a colour that sort of got away from me over time. When I moved to the countryside, it made me very ner- vous, because I have always fed on the city, on the syncopation of the city, and on urban rhythms, and my work has always been in dialogue with architecture, and the idea of

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doors and windows and stacked 4. Sean Scully’s studio 5 floors and so on. But when I moved in New York. to the countryside I found that I could use the things in nature – the 5. Mooseurach, one of a series of paintings colour of the sky, the way in which named after the the light in the sky hits the Alps at village in southern different times in the day and trans- Germany where Sean forms the stone into luminous mat- Scully lives for part ter. I found that I could bring that of the year. into my paintings in my studio, because I paint next to a big picture window, and right next to me is a huge forest where the mist hangs around a lot, which makes fantas- tically mysterious colours, and also there are the Alps. What has hap- pened is that a kind of pink-purple colour has come into my work, and you can see it in this painting right here – that pink colour and those strange purpley colours, purpley greys, are the colour of the Alps in the evening. It has enriched my pal- ette immeasurably. What has hap- pened is that the paintings have become informed by forces outside painting, a watercolour, as a direct all the Wall of Light paintings. the studio that are visual and more result of looking at the temples. You I’m a person who needs a lot of directly connected to landscape, as can’t help but be impressed and time. I think that my work is deeply if the sensations of landscape are moved by the silence of these places, romantic. That’s why I go back to superimposed onto timeless archi- and how the stone is transformed the Doric idea. I’m so moved by tectural form. by the morning and the night. the sacrifice of the 300 Spartan People were spiritually inhabited by warriors [at Thermopylae] who Your Wall of Light series marked this theatre of architecture, and that defended our future. an especially prolific phase in your affected me very deeply. I didn’t career in the late 1990s. What think about the title. I just wrote When you visited the Musée d’Art inspired these paintings? underneath the watercolour: ‘Wall Classique de Mougins last year, It was 1984 and I was on the beach of Light’. I parked that painting for you were interested in the principal at Zihuatanejo in Mexico when I about 14 years, then, in about 1998, concept behind the museum in that got the Wall of Light idea. I made a when I was ready, I started making it displays ancient art alongside

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I’m only interested in fundamental forms... there are no twirly bits in my paintings , 7 6. The design of no de coration, 8 Sean’s tattoo is a no elaboration megalithic tri-spiral taken from a carving inside Newgrange, a 5,000-year-old passage tomb near Dublin in Ireland.

7. Wall of LIght Sky, 2000.

8. The artist pictured in Mooseurach in 2003.

Baroque, Neoclassical, modern and simple forms. The first thing that I something I do for my life, for my contemporary art. saw in the Museum of Cycladic Art own spirit. It’s not about position- This idea is very interesting because in Athens was a stone cross, made ing my work in the sense that a there is a huge connection between 2,000 years before Jesus Christ was show at the Metropolitan Museum antiquities and contemporary art. born, a kind of rough, fat carved does – it doesn’t necessarily or And the reason is in some sense stone cross that looked almost like a immediately impact on my position primitive: both are primitive. It’s piece of minimal art, like something in 21st-century art. It is something like my tattoo; it’s exactly the same that you would have seen 20 years I do because I want to. It is an act of thing as my tattoo. My tattoo design ago. So the idea of closing down the pure engagement with a fascinating comes from Newgrange – you could space between ancient art and con- collection, with an extreme vision, quite easily incorporate items from temporary art is true – it has about which I also have. It is an extreme Newgrange into your museum, it a truthfulness because it is an art vision within an extreme vision. n in the same way that the British that tries to be somehow direct in Museum does. There is a stone in its appeal or direct in its approach, • Sean Scully: DORIC is on show the British Museum that has exactly and it dispenses to a large degree at the Musée d’Art Classique de the same drawing on it as my tat- with narrative and perspective, Mougins (www.mouginsmusee. too. The idea of putting ancient which was really invented to illus- com) until 29 September. art with contemporary art is very trate Christianity. • Sean Scully: Triptychs exhibition interesting, particularly anything will open at Pallant House Gallery that has been influenced by mini- Why did you decide to stage your (www.pallant.org.uk) in Chichester malism, because minimalism is exhibition, DORIC, in the Musée on 2 November and will run until something that you can almost see d’Art Classique de Mougins? 9 February 2014. in art of 4,000 years ago – very The idea of making small shows is

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