尚·斯卡里

Juda Rowan Gallery, London

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1984

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the red and yellow tones are deeper and richer in the original and the top element tends more towards green; the illustration also fails to convey the sculptural quality of this work. Condition: Please refer to the department for a professional condition report.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

“I think with painting you can get rid of the problem of time. You can feel it abstracted in the rhythms, in the layers of the painting, but you are, for a moment, free.”

Sean Scully, quoted in: David Carrier, Sean Scully, London 2004, p. 210.

Locked in a sensuous dance of geometric rigour and chromatic explosion, with shimmering hues and colour bands working in concert to construct a mesmeric architecture of line, edge and angle, Dust is a sumptuous manifestation of Sean Scully's idiosyncratic visual vocabulary.

Embarking on the Sisyphean effort to reconcile the architectonic exactitude and linearity of Mondrian with the sacred atmosphere and vigorous heroics of Rothko, in the 1980s Scully began to disavow the formal stricture of the labyrinthine grid-like structures that dominated his earlier output, in order to formulate a lyrical register of majestic poignancy, in which the eternal dialectic of poetry and geometry, compositional austerity and emotional profundity, aggressive brushwork and silent contemplation reaches its highest sublimation. Rehearsing a rhapsodic fugue of structural falling and rising, with orderly stacks of horizontal and vertical bands interlocked as if architectural lintels and beams, the present work appears masterfully poised in a tightrope balance of expressive tactility and faultless volumetric precision.

With their chromatic spectrum stretching from slate to ash, silver and pewter, the horizontal grey bands, fractured by a deep cobalt green caesura and traversed by ethereal dabs of iridescent white, evoke a changing nocturnal domain, suggestive of winter sceneries in northern climates. In a dramatic antithesis, alternating segments of deep sienna and venetian red conjure images of the glaringly intense, shadowless light of Mexican noon, whose flagrant radiance, etched on the artist's memory after several visits to the country in the early 1980s, would become an unmistakable trait in Scully's signature interplay of prismatic dichotomies. At once calm and tremulous, resilient and vulnerable, the individual stripes and fields of colour seem to clash and imperceptibly nudge one another, creating dense rifts and interstices that reveal quasi-geological sediments of roughly hewn impastos and feathery layers of paint.

The result is an orchestrated archaeology of painterly gesture, in which stratifications of pigments act as evidence of the creative process behind the artwork's genesis, engaging the viewer in a potent ritual of visual excavation. Not restricted to the tonal field, the tension between horizontal and vertical elements, one of the abiding strengths of Scully's work, extends to the metaphysical domain of light and darkness, attempting, through the intersection of resilient architectural forms and fleeting outbursts of colour and light, to breathe spiritual life and human imperfection into the aesthetic of transcendental abstraction.

Seamlessly blending architectural gravitas and chromatic vibration, Dust captures the essence of the unparalleled synthesis of crude brushwork and intellectual proportioning, spatial severity and sinuous trait-making that infuse Scully's pictorial oeuvre with a fiery compositional force, like a heroic poem set to music by lyrics of colour.