Sean Scully : [Exhibition]

SEAN SCULLY The Art Institute of Chicago· December 15, 1987-February 7, 1988 . ~?ill ~1'6~ . 'SEAN SCULLY 1975 and 1980, Scully reduced his painting to its basic armature, primarily horizontal stripes of darkened hue. Slowly, however, the work began to exhibit elements that would provide the basis for his later breakthroughs. During these years , for example , Scully began to enrich the color in his paintings by varying his grounds. He also gradu ally eliminated the use of tape , allowing the edges of his bands to undulate. By the early 1980s, Scully was misaligning painted panels of different sizes and employing stripes of contrasting width and effect. Perhaps most important, Scully abandoned acrylic in favor of oil paint. Extended through the addition of gel medium , Scully's oil paint has a silky, creamy texture , as well as a translucence that allows the ground beneath to emerge and alter the surface color. Scully's breakthrough proved to be Heart of Darkness (1982), which draws it title from the Joseph Conrad novel and is the earliest painting in this exhibition . The painting is dominated by black and its relationship with adjoining red , white , and yellow stripes , with each aligned and scaled differ ently. It is an intensely physical performance , with To Want the different panels assembled to enhance their contrasting impact. Scully's willingness to trust a Sean Scully's paintings are beautiful , but it is a night; from 1965 to 1971, he received formal vivid intuition is evident here , as is a directness beauty achieved without grace. They consist of training in art at the Croydon College of Art in that presses beyond the fussiness that often in colors that cannot be neatly characterized , and London and at Newcastle University. During these fects Minimalist art. that are realized by allowing strong underpainting years , he admired the work of Americans Brice to merge with the surface. Where the wavering Marden and Robert Ryman from afar and when , in Since 1982 Scully has employed a number of edges of these lushly painted bands meet, the 1972, he received a Knox Fellowship to work at devices that have enhanced the agility of his ground emerges willfully, demanding our atten Harvard University, he leapt at the opportunity. compositions and the range of his expression. In tion . Scully's compositions are subtly unbal addition to consistently surprising shifts in anced , defying any preconceived or accustomed Scully has worked to humanize abstraction since weight, color, and brushwork, Scully's paintings order. His paintings are human in scale and are the early 1970s. Although his work of that period often consist of individual panels that project mounted on unusually deep stretchers , accentuat has been characterized as Minimalist- carefully sculpturally , as is the case with To Want(1985). In ing the work 's forceful , but purposefully imper taped and vibrantly colored lattices -this critical this work there is a tripartite vertical division of the fect , personalities. tag has only limited application. In fact , Scully's field, with each section granted an emphatically wo'rk of these years evidences a strongly inde different personality . In Remember(1986) Scully Every element of Scully's art is intended to pendent streak. For example , rather than using abutted panels of differing depths in mid-stripe, counteract the expectation that abstract painting tape to enhance the hard-edged precision of his creating a structural tension in the midst of a rich should be thoroughly designed and completely work, as was then popular, Scully used it to golden-amber band . Recently Scully has broad resolved. The artist has described t]lis as introduc develop a surface texture , allowing it to remain on ened the width of his bands dramatically, and in ing a "jolt" into the paintings ,1 an unexpected colo the canvas in the finished work. Scully's rejection Dreamland (1987) he placed three white fields to ristic or compositional element that suggests the of the tactful elegance of Color Field painting was , one side of the work, thereby unbalancing the humane character of the painting and thereby in part, a response to the academic formalism he composition to powerful expressive effect. And grants each work a strong emotional reference. encountered while at Harvard. Although this oppo most recently, in Vice (1987) Scully has inserted "What I don 't want to do is lose what I consider to sition would become far more emphatic in later panels directly into the center of an existing paint be the advantages of figurative art - its immedi years , the "Greenbergian idea of abstraction as ing , contrasting narrow internal stripes with much acy, its associational power - which abstract design "3served Scully as a negative model even at wider ones that enclose them . painting doesn't have. "2 this early stage. Criticism of Sean Scully's work has often focused Born in Dublin in 1945, Scully grew up in poverty The artist returned to London in 1974, but he on the artist's seeming application of existing in London. Apprenticed as a graphic designer at emigrated to the United States the following year motifs and approaches to abstraction. The stripe age fifteen , he studied drawing and painting at and established himself in New York. Between has a long-standing pedigree in formalist art, ranging from the early work of Frank Stella to Brice Marden . Yet Scully's art is characterized by a need to personalize each painting ; there is a rugged individuality apparent in his work that bespeaks the artist's character with extraordinary acuity. Scully rejects the "what you see is what you see" approach of formal painting , possess ing a much more romantic outlook that links him to Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still among abstract painters , and Henri Matisse and Vincent van Gogh among the great modern figurative artists . It is the direct ness of these artists' work that inspires Scully , the possibility that a painting can be either figurative or abstract without sacrificing either accessibility or forcefulness. The artist distinguishes his paint ings from those of other abstract painters, noting : A lot of abstraction can get so self-indulgent. It's kind of like a gentleman 's sport. It is so rarefied, it really is the artist in his ivory tower.... I've tried to make my paintings moving, powerful, and necessary, but to give them a kind of nobility-a physical strength so that they are proud of who they are ... they Remember are beautiful but also potent. 4 Although still young, and having severely limited his formal options, Sean Scully has avoided the sterile formalism much abstract art begets . Through his intense will and sensitive touch , he has coaxed a genuinely human , personal expres sion from the striped surfaces of his paintings . NEAL BENEZRA Curator, Department of Twentieth-Century Painting and Sculpture NOTES 1. Quoted in Joseph Masheck, "Piecing Things Together," Sean Scully Paintings, exh. cat . (New York: David McKee Gallery, 1986) , n. pag . 2. Quoted in Judith Higgins, "Sean Scully and the Metamorphosis of the Stripe ," Artnews (Nov. 1985) , p. 110. 3. Ibid. 4. Quoted in John Caldwell, "The New Paintings ," Sean Dreamland Scully, exh . cat. (Pittsburgh : Carnegie Institute , Mu seum of Art , 1985), pp. 20-21. The author is indebted to Sean Scully for time spent in conversation in New York on March 3, 1987, and in London on August 7, 1987. SELECTED ONE-PERSON EXHIBITIONS 1984 An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, The Museum 1987 University Art Musuem , University of of Modern Art, New York California, Berkeley, California Currents 6, Milwaukee Art Galerie Schmela, DOsseldorf, Germany Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin Rowan Gallery , London 1983 Contemporary Abstract Painting, 1986 David McKee Gallery, New York Muhlenberg College, Allentown , 1985 Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (traveled to 1982 Abstract Painting, Jersey City the Museum of Fine Arts , Boston , Museum , Jersey City, New Jersey Massachusetts) 1981 New Directions, Sidney Janis Galerie Schmela, DOsseldorf,Germany Gallery, New York David McKee Gallery, New York 1980 Marking Black, The Bronx Museum 1984 Rowan Gallery, London of the Arts , New York Galerij S65, Aalst, Belgium 1979 New Wave Painting, The 1983 David McKee Gallery, New York Clocktower, New York 1982 William Beadleston Gallery, New York 1978 Certain Traditions, Edmonton Art 1981 Museum tor (Sub-) Kultur, Berlin Gallery, Edmonton , Alberta, Canada Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, England (traveled throughout Canada, (traveled throughout the United sponsored by the British Council) 1973 La Peinture anglais aujourd'hui, Sean Scully, 1986. Photograph by Leo Holub , courtesy of David Kingdom under the auspices of the McKee Galle ry, New York. Arts Council of Great Britain) Musee d'art moderne de la ville de 1980 Susan Caldwell Gallery, New York Paris , Paris 1979 Nadin Gallery, New York International Biennial of Art, SEAN SCULLY Rowan Gallery, London Menton, France The Clocktower, New York British Painting, Hayward Gallery , Born in Dublin , Ireland , in 1945, Sean Scully 1977 Duffy-Gibbs Gallery, New York London attended the Croyden College of Art, London Rowan Gallery, London (1965-68), Newcastle University, Newcastle, 1976 Tortue Gallery, Santa Monica, England (1968-71), and Harvard University, California Cambridge , Massachusetts (1972-73). He moved SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS 1975 Rowan Gallery, London permanently to the United States in 1975, teaching Tortue Gallery, Santa Monica, at Princeton University, Princeton , New Jersey, Arts Council of Great Britian , London California from 1977 to 1983. A United States citizen since Australian National Gallery, Canberra 1983, Scully was awarded a Guggenheim Fellow Centro cultural de arte contemporaneo , ship in 1983 and National Endowment for the Arts Mexico City Artist's Fellowship in 1984. He currently lives and SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS works in New York. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.

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