Footnotes

Provenance
With Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, 2001, where acquired by the family of the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
Edinburgh, Ingleby Gallery, Sean Scully, 1 August-15 September 2001
Edinburgh, Ingleby Gallery, Twenty Five, 28 January-31 March 2023

Though Irish-born, Scully spent the formative years of his career living and working in the London of the present work's title until he emigrated to the United States in 1975, a place where he felt art was 'taken seriously' (Sean Scully, quoted in C. Bray, 'Sean Scully: In Search of the Light', in Art World, Issue 7, October/November 2008, p.48). Here, he helped lead the transition from Minimalism to Emotional Abstraction in painting, abandoning the reduced vocabulary of Minimalism in favour of a return to metaphor and spirituality in art. But it was trips to Morocco in the 1960s, and later Mexico in the 1980s, where his imagination was ignited by the sight of strips of dyed wool hanging out to dry, coloured tiles, fading facades and rich kilim carpets that acted as a foundation stone for the artists lifelong obsession with the stripe.

London 6.9.01 is a prime example of the interlocking bands and tonal gradation that is quintessential Scully at the height of his artistic power. In the present work, three dense background bands of blue, black and red cohabit easily but do so without giving up their identities. Layered on top is a picture within a picture, a smaller inset or 'window' of five vertical stripes of ochre and russet. The positioning of narrow vertical stripes set into a background of broader horizontal stripes invite the viewer to move forward and backward, introducing a physical and emotional dynamism. Here is an abstraction that encourages dialogue and Scully has regularly cited the 'spiritual' aspect of his oeuvre, commenting that he 'is trying to get at deep emotions through simple forms' (Irish Arts Review, Spring 2006, p.75).

The present example on paper is executed on a large scale and speaking to the immediacy of the medium, the artist said 'Pastel is like putting makeup on. There is a dust on the paper, which I rub in. I push it right into the paper with a piece of cloth or paper. Once it's embedded into the surface, I fix it. And then I work it up, adding a layer, fixing it, adding another layer, fixing it again, and so on until the pastel starts to stand up a little from the paper. At a certain point, if you keep pushing, you start taking it off. So you have to give in' (Sean Scully, quoted in M. Poirier, Sean Scully, New York, 1990 p.143).

Scully is one of the foremost artists of his generation with art critic Arthur Danto confirming 'Sean Scully's name belongs on the shortest of short lists of the major painters of our time' (Arthur C. Danto, 'Sean Scully', Unnatural Wonders: Essays from the Gap Between Art and Life, Columbia University Press, New York, 2005). His work is housed in some of the most prominent public and private collections worldwide including Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Gallery, London; Arts Council of Great Britain, London and Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, among others.