Sean
Scully
Until July 23; Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh
From October, a Sean Scully show will tour the USA, reaching its climax
at New York’s Metropolitan Museum. The exhibition blurb explains
that the abstract painter was “Born in Ireland and raised in
England, countries known for their relatively dark atmosphere”.
Of course all things are relative, and no-one knows that better than
Scully.
For the past 30 years the painter has been based in the relatively
light atmosphere (one presumes) of New York, where he has made it
his project to “fill in” minimalism “with the pathos
of history”. Stripes, rectangles and squares are his stock in
trade, and over three decades Scully has filled the world’s most
prestigious museums with endless variations on this deceptively simple
theme.
Scully takes the absoluteness of American minimalism, with its hard
edges, pristine colour fields and mechanical repetition, and introduces
doubt. Edges are blurred, overlapped and messy; colour is stained
with the debris of its predecessor; and no two forms are the same
twice.
It’s been said that Scully has introduced a European sensibility
into an otherwise American movement. That is true, but it misses the
point, which is more about history than geography. The USA is simply
too young to provide us with the five centuries of oil-painting to
which Scully’s work is umbilically connected.
A sneak preview at Ingleby Gallery, of nine of the artist’s latest
paintings and prints, demonstrates the kind of drama and narrative
which ties Scully to Rubens and Manet as persuasively as it does to
Rothko. Leaving aside the disappointingly flat watercolours, the textured
patches of colour in the etchings and oils are built up into compositions
which tell their own stories.
Screw up your eyes in front of his etching and aquatint, Wall of Light
Crimson, and you can almost imagine a biblical banquet with clusters
of quarrelling figures and revellers around a laden table. As with
the Flemish paintings it evokes, these internal dramas create a tension
which holds the overall composition in perfect balance.
The oil painting, Wall of Light Orange Green, is unusually garish
for Scully (influenced by the bright light he encountered in Mexico).
A solitary patch of orange in the bottom left attempts in vain to
counterbalance three clumsy orange and green bands at the top right,
resulting in a teeth-on-edge drama which is difficult to watch.
It’s amazing what you can do with a few stripes and squares.
Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 19.06.05