The National CollegeDesigning for Life
From Thought Lines 6, 2002
An anthology of student research Edited by Christa-Maria Lerm HayeNational College of Art and Design, Dublin, 2002
The Critical Analyses of Sean Scully
Mark Swords
Much has been written about Sean Scully and his work. Many of those who have written about him have done so in a positive light, while far fewer have had anything negative to say. This unbalanced ratio between his admirers and his critics seems, to me, to be an unusual one. Much of the writing is concerned with Scully himself. Those who admire him seem as fascinated with his personality and background as with his work itself. This has caused Scully's work and, even more so, Scully himself to be somewhat of an enigma.
Who is Sean Scully? Among other things he is an artist who appears to us through television programmes, articles in magazines and interviews with art critics. We can only guess at who he is, if we know him through these sources alone. He appears, to me, to be larger than life, too romantic, too dramatic and too intense to be believed. There is definitely a myth surrounding Sean Scully. It is this myth of Scully and not the man himself that has been presented to us through the media. With the aid of this myth, the whole Sean Scully phenomenon (his personality and his work) has been marketed to us by both himself and his supporters.
In his article, The Leader of the Band, the art critic Aidan Dunne notices that Scully's
'imposing height combined with his carefully chosen manner of speaking reminded one of his fellow artists of a stereotypical East End gangster. Another acquaintance, remarking on Scully's close-cropped hair and martial bearing, suggested that he looked like a U.S. Marine' (Dunne, 1998, p. 1).
Dunne describes Scully's manner of speaking in the same article, only as 'laced with distinctive traces of a London accent' (Dunne, 1998, p. 1). Having heard Scully's accent myself, I would agree with Aidan Dunne: it appears 'chosen'. For a man who grew up in London from the age of four to adulthood and not have a London accent is suspicious. His voice, to me, contains the accents of Ireland, London and New York in equal amounts. In this way, even his voice contains the confusion of his cultural identity. His physical size (over 6 ft) and his bearing, as described to us in the media, emphasize an intense masculinity.
Maurice Poirior describes Scully as a 'lyric poet [and a] fighter, today still refusing to be pushed around and haunted by a violent past' (Poirier, 1990, p. 13). Again, Scully himself is willing to support this myth as he discusses fighting in his youth, 'I had to defend that reputation [...] I was like the fastest gun in town' (Poirier, 1990, p. 13). This statement, in particular, sounds more like a quote from a movie than an artist attempting to relate his youth (troubled or not) to his work. Poirior continues by describing 'how, at sixteen he was part of a street gang involved with motorbikes and violence' (Poirier, 1990, p. 14). Perhaps it is Poirior's aim to present Scully, even in his youth, to be intense, powerful but essentially a misled young man lacking direction or focus. Until, that is, he found art. Poirior claims himself that, 'a temperamental disposition and past have taken their toll, leaving Scully a tormented individual for whom art appears to be the only way to salvation' (Poirier, 1990, p. 13).
Why does this myth exist? What do Scully and his supporters have to gain by presenting us with this image? Aidan Dunne writes that, 'most people would agree that Sean Scully [...] does not look like an artist, or at least what most people expect an artist to look like' (Dunne, 1998, p. 1). Scully's image however, does seem to have the traits of a stereotypical artist, or at least the stereotypical expressionist. He fits in with a certain cliché of what an artist is. He is too close to his emotions and therefore unstable. He is romantic and, best of all, angst-ridden - certainly subscribing to the cliché of the artist.
Most importantly, the stories of Scully's youth, as presented by his supporters, inform us that he had a very difficult adolescence. Poirior even claims that Scully's past is both haunting and violent. (Poirier, 1990, p. 13). This is particularly important as it gives the adult Scully something to paint about. Scully's work is all about emotions. His art is easier to accept if we know he has something to express, especially something more interesting or more intense than our own average emotions.
Honesty is a virtue and Scully feels that it is of great importance in art: he claims that 'Van Gogh was [for me] a spiritual example, in his profound honesty' (Combalia, 1995, p. 33). If this is true, why the charade? Why does Scully assist in the dishonest image of himself presented by his supporters? I would argue that Scully sees the merits in his own myth as I have pointed them out. He is aware of their value in relation to the appreciation of his work. This myth, along with other factors, has made Scully's success possible, both financially and critically.
However, is his success - especially his critical success - deserved? Supporters of Scully's work seem, at times almost blinded by the positive aspects of his work, as they see them. I believe there are three key issues, which Scully's supporters consistently leave unanswered. These are: repetition, emotional content of the work and the accusation of Scully being traditional.
Is Sean Scully's work repetitive? I believe the format he employs in his work is somewhat repetitive. This is almost undeniable, even by Scully's supporters. The more important question is that of content. Is the content of Scully's work repetitive? One theory could be that Scully has found what could be termed as a successful recipe and is enjoying the comforts that this success must bring him.
Another theory could be that Scully, from the outset of his career, has set for himself a highly restrictive brief. That he would only allow himself to make abstract work, which involved in some way stripes, bars or squares. The theory is that this intentional restriction of format would have consequences on how Scully explored abstraction. As the artist himself has said on this topic: 'to explode the possibilities' (Combalia, 1995, p. 33), of a restricted format. The conclusion of this theory is that to overcome such a restriction, Scully would be forced to push his own creativity to greater and greater heights in order to arrive at a new solution each time he worked.
This brings us back to the question, is the content of Scully's work repetitive? I suggest that the answer cannot conclusively be either yes or no. I believe that the differences between the monochrome, almost minimalist paintings of the late seventies and the work he creates today are significant. Scully's current work is far more expressionistic. Since the eighties, his lines have become hand painted, more organic and gestural. His colours, too, are less sombre than those in his early New York paintings. I would agree with Waldemar Januszczak, when he claims that, in recent years, 'the stripes have lost weight and gained buoyancy' (Januszczak, 1999). These changes, however, although significant, have happened very slowly, over a period of nearly thirty years.
I feel that Scully has used a repetitive format to his advantage. He has, indeed, explored this format extensively, in scale, mood and through devices like insets and alternating plains within a painting. However, the rate of evolution in his work has been so slow that an inevitable amount of repetition has occurred. Having said this, I do not believe that Scully's current work is the same as his work from the late seventies. Equally, I would not agree with the view put forward by Ned Rifkin, 'as the 1980's yielded to the 1990's, Scully continued to experiment with fresh approaches to his paintings' (Rifkin, 1995, p. 18). Scully's evolution has been far more sluggish than this statement implies. The issue of emotional content in Scully's work is a highly subjective area. There are unexplained opinions on this topic from both Scully's supporters and those who are more critical of his work. What conclusive evidence is there of the presence of emotions in his art?
There is, for one thing, the scale of his work. Although, Scully makes smaller paintings, much of his work is large, some panels exceeding eleven feet by nine feet. There is an ambitious quality to the work because of this scale, and colour, combined with this can have a powerful visual effect. The sheer size of the work, therefore does at least suggest Scully's desire to express something. However, scale alone does not prove the presence of anything except large amounts of canvas and paint. The repetitive nature of Scully's format, as has been discussed, allows the more variable elements, such as emotional content, to be emphasized. Again this only demonstrates Scully's intention, and nothing else. Scully has shown these intentions in other ways. The titles of his work often invite the viewer to speculate on the work from a more emotional angle, titles like Dead Sea or Paul (after his dead son). The most clear cut example of his intentions comes from Scully himself, he claims, 'I want people to be able to take a feeling from my work, that they can use in their lives and is sustaining' (Glazebrook, 1997, p. 7).
There appears to be no conclusive evidence of the presence of emotion in Scully's paintings. However criticizing him because of this would be unfair. Art, and especially art like Scully's is not in the business of providing proofs, it is not a science. In a way, there is a take it or leave it attitude to Scully's work, you either feel it or you do not.
The question of whether or not Scully is traditional is, again, impossible to answer conclusively. The notion of what is traditional is relative to what constitutes being modern or contemporary. In comparison to artists like Damien Hirst or Jason Martin, Scully could indeed be considered traditional. Similarly, if Scully were viewed in relation to Claudia Bravo or Lucien Freud he could equally be considered both radical and modern. However, if Scully were considered modern, it would probably be on the basis of his practice of abstraction, which in the art world today is no great claim to being contemporary. Regardless of whether abstraction was invented by Malevich or Picasso, it has still been in existence for too long to be considered radical.
Is traditionalism radical? By definition, it cannot be that. David Carrier suggests that Scully is radical because of his attention to and appreciation of, tradition. (Eccher/Carrier, 1996, p. 49). His claim sounds as if he was trying to convince us that Scully is Avant-Garde, that progressive traditional is the new modern. Armin Zweite claims that Scully's work reconsiders the founding principles of modern art. (Zweite, 1995, p. 21). Perhaps there is a thin, but significant line between reconsidering these principles and simply considering them again.
This leads to a most important question concerning Sean Scully's art. What does Scully do that has not been done before. Scully is perhaps, most famous for painting stripes, however this is something that is not exclusive to him. Indeed Francois Morellet and Agnes Martin, both of whom Scully has cited as influences, were making stripey paintings long before he did. Scully is also known for the repetitive nature of his format, a format that he has kept constant throughout his career. This, however is nothing new, as Brian Fallon points out, both Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman did this (Fallon, 1994). Other artists, who did this, include Jackson Pollock and Ad Reinhardt, all of whom again, Scully has cited as influential. His shaped canvases, with their surfaces both projecting and receding away from the viewer are also nothing new; Frank Stella was making similarly distorted painting surfaces in the late fifties and sixties. Possibly, Scully has adehered more rigidly to his chosen format than any other artist. However, if Scully claims his own originality on these grounds, his point seems to me highly pedantic.
I would not claim that Scully is wholly traditional. He is, perhaps, much more traditional that he is contemporary. It is also hard to see how Scully's work reconsiders the principles of Modern art as Armin Zweite claims. (Zweite, 1995, p. 21). To reconsider something is to consider it again with the intention of altering, yet Scully's work does nothing, which I see as significantly new or original. Perhaps, it would be easier to argue that Scully has considered the principles of modern art, and has, instead of altering them simply repeated them.
Most critics' fascination with Scully's background and the image it helps to create have perhaps tainted many peoples' view of Scully as an artist. One could suggest that a highly romanticized version of this background has been selected for us.
Also, the conclusions drawn from Scully's personal history by many critics are mere speculation, and they are often forced to relate to a particular point made by the writer. Scully could be described as an abstract painter whose work is consistent, emotionally charged and, because of its apparent traditionalism, radical. Equally acceptable would be a view of Scully's work as repetitious, emotionally void and outdated. If art critics concerned themselves more with art and less with artists, we would at least be spared the unacceptable view of Scully as 'the fastest gun in town'. (Poirier, 1990, p. 13)
Bibliography
CARRIER, David, 'Sean Scully. The Painter of Modern Life', in Eccher 1996.
COMBALIA, Victoria, 'Sean Scully: Against Formalism' in Rifkin 1995.
DUNNE, Aidan, 'Leader of the Band', in The World of Hibernia: An Ongoing Celebration of Ireland and the Irish Around the World, 1998, www.twoh.com/portrait/scully.html (18th October 2000).
ECCHER,Danilo, Sean Scully, Gallery D'Arte Moderna Bologna, Milano:Charta 1996.
FALLON, Brian, 'Master of many media', The Irish Times, 17 November 1994.
GLAZEBROOK, Mark, 'Summarizing Living and Painting', in Manchester City Art Galleries 1997.
JANUSZCZAK, Waldemar, 'A star earns his stripes', The Sunday Times, 18 July 1999.
MANCHESTER City Art Galleries, Sean Scully Paintings, Manchester, London: The Pale Green Press 1997.
POIRIER, Maurice, Sean Scully, New York: Hudson Hills Press 1990.
RIFKIN, Ned, Sean Scully: Twenty Years 1976-1995, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, London: Thames and Hudson 1995.
RIFKIN, Ned, 'Sean Scully Twenty Years, 1976-1995' in Rifkin 1995
ZWEITE, Armin, 'To Humanize Abstract Painting: Reflections on Sean Scully's "Stone Light"' in Rifkin 1995.
