Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

  • AMMpro
  • AMM Fantasy Collecting Game
  • Podcast
  • Contact Us

Scully on Solid Ground

January 12, 2009 by Marion Maneker

Eli Broad in front of his Sean ScullyJackie Wullschlager reviews Sean Scully’s new London gallery show at the Timothy Taylor gallery. Scully’s rising auction prices and visibility have been unmistakable in recent years. Just look at Eli Broad standing proudly before his.

Is Scully Rothko’s heir? Born in Ireland in 1945, reared in slum London in a family he describes as “dysfunctional beyond belief”, Scully was a brawler, blues DJ and professional typesetter – the tough, physical quality of his pictures, their jazzy rhythms and slab-like insets each reflect so many layers from his life – before he squeezed in an art education in his 20s. He moved to New York in 1975, five years after Rothko’s suicide, and fretted through monochrome minimalist lines and grids before the breakthroughs on show here: monumental striped canvases composed of several panels of varying thickness, not quite fitting together, layered in broad, wet on wet, crude strokes slashed on with household paintbrushes. [ . . . ]

Yet what Scully calls this “troubling density” is also very European, thick with references to the history of art. A more measured, less ecstatic colourist than Rothko, he repeatedly quotes Velázquez blacks, Monet’s silvery greys, Cézanne’s building blocks and recurring landscape hues of ochres, browns, blues. Matisse is recalled in the push-pull of figuration-abstraction and also the oriental references (both Matisse and Scully were inspired by the patterns of Moroccan textiles). De Kooning’s paradoxical macho grace, Pollock’s linearity, Jasper Johns’ rigour, also come to mind, and Scully has stressed too an affinity with the London School, noting “a slightly depressive aspect … the colour of old light in Freud, Auerbach, Kossoff and myself”.

Sean Scully Re-invigorates Abstract Painting (Financial Times)

More from Art Market Monitor

  • Beautiful Inside My Head ForeverBeautiful Inside My Head Forever
  • A Visit with the ReaperA Visit with the Reaper
  • Is the Auction House of the Future a Managed Marketplace?Is the Auction House of the Future a Managed Marketplace?
  • Sotheby’s to Issue $300m Special Dividend, Buyback $150m in StockSotheby’s to Issue $300m Special Dividend, Buyback $150m in Stock
  • Picasso Sales Tumble 40% in New York Picasso Sales Tumble 40% in New York
  • Phillips Cont Frieze Day Sale = £5.1mPhillips Cont Frieze Day Sale = £5.1m

Filed Under: Uncategorized

About Marion Maneker

Want to get Art Market Monitor‘s posts sent to you in our email? Sign up below by clicking on the Subscribe button.

Top Posts

  • Keith Haring’s 1989 Retrospect Comes to Sotheby’s London Prints Sale
  • British Modernists Draw Deep Bidding in Christie's $42 M. London Sales
  • $10 M. Picasso Portrait Unseen for Decades to Sell at Bonhams
  • Tony Podesta's Secret Art Buying
  • Norman Rockwell's Not Gay. But Is He a Great Artist?
  • Four of Picasso's Women Valued at $28m Come to Christie's from Rose-Walters Collection
  • Roy Lichtenstein’s Top Ten Auction Prices
  • Miami Sales Report 2015
  • David Bowie Talks About Art (with Julian Schnabel)
  • The Billion-Dollar NYC Apartment of Ben Heller
  • About Us/ Contact
  • Podcast
  • AMMpro
  • Newsletter
  • FAQ

twitterfacebooksoundcloud
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
California Privacy Rights
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Advertise on Art Market Monitor