NORMANDIE IMPRESSIONISTE 109
supplanted belief in the divinely spiritual, it is difficult to imagine a work of art being invested with anything close to the kind of significance those paintings once carried. Scully knows this, of course, and it might be argued that his work is concerned with what might be called non-specific spirituality that draws on his own experiences. Te 12, a dozen canvasses, process down the nave like holy stations on the route to a felt and wood version of a monumental 10m-high Opulent Ascension North that stands at the crossing. Standing inside this great celestial ladder, the shock of the view gazing up to the lantern is neither claustrophobic nor
unsettling. It is a leap of faith. Tese are all stunners – they grab you, the power of this art. In the centre of the nave stands a wooden column, Round Sleeper Stack from 2023, punctuating one’s journey. Along both sides of the sanctuary there are two formidable paintings from Scully’s Doric series: Doric (2018) and Doric Air and Darkness (2016), both of which are over 4m in length and almost 3m high. Finally, around the apse are family images from Eleuthera, an island in the Bahamas visited by Scully that gave the impetus to a series of figurative paintings first unveiled in 2017, a candid declaration of parental love. Outside, A New Life made this year awaits visitors in the sleeping cemetery, a sculpture that reuses industrial corten steel offcuts from previous sculptures by the artist. Jean de la Varende called Normandy ‘a land of vast open spaces bathed by the sky’. Entre terre et mer, entre vert et bleu, that is Normandy, and that is Scully’s Landline paintings, begun in 2000, with their endless horizons and emphasis on nature, just as it was when he began them after seeing the sea and sky in Norfolk; the beauty of work inspired by nature. Te lush landscapes and the diffuse light of the impressionists that created a new art form – dramatic cliffs, rolling hills, green fields, orchards kissed with rich pink apple blossoms, the allure is as powerful as first love, and just as ineffable – have found a new expression in Scully. He may not be catching dreams but he is always capturing a sense of nature. Te beauty and grace of the landscape, so distinctive, so diverse, certainly compelling, here once again renewed in these gigantic paintings – that Scully says, given the chance, he would have made even bigger. Assessed sur place rather than on the canvases of Boudin, Corot or Monet, those landscapes have an impressionistic quality. Te perception comes from the way the light filters through the tall old trees, diffused across a horse meadow in the early morning haze that lingers until noon, or illuminates the cumulus clouds moving across a pastel sky. Between Heaven and Earth was the title of a recent exhibition of Scully’s work in Paris. His relationship with the sky has always been extremely important to his work; the colours in particular – the whites, creams, blue-greys, brown-greys – all come from the sky. Ten the earth colours – the ochres, the browns, the rusts – they all overlap and they are all a memory of landscape. Tese atmospheric connections to Cézanne resonate in Scully’s fabric of colours. Te artist now has a home and studio near Aix-en-Provence and close to the Mont Saint-Victoire, which became an obsession with Cézanne, whose systematic approach to painting heralded abstraction, repeating patterns a part of his strategy. Scully is a 21st-century artist who paints in the tradition of Cézanne, finding the abstract in nature, with long furrowed lines that recall ploughed fields around his new home. Reconciling the logic of structure and the sensuality of surfaces, Scully has humanised
his grids. Add to that the weaving of threads and you can see the intertwined and overlapping lines of Scully’s artwork, the repetition, the geometry, the saturation of colour and emotion.
Te poetic tradition in the Charles Trenet song from 1963 La douce France describes geography as much as history, the ghostly outline of an old landscape beneath the superficial covering of the contemporary is to be made vividly aware of the endurance of core myths, a way of looking, of rediscovering what we have, yet another reflection of ‘the things coming from underneath. Tat’s very important,’ Scully says. ‘My paintings are like the blues. I love John Lee Hooker. “Boom boom boom boom”.’ Tat’s Scully all right. Talking to Scully it is not difficult to be drawn along with his punchy enthusiasm, his verbal agility, and his animated arguments. He once said, ‘punches are good, counterpunches are better’, and here, Scully counterpunches organised religion. Te punchline is that in such a setting the work is both provocative and thoughtful. Te elder statesman of abstract art is certainly not elderly. He quotes Lear: ‘Te sorrows of the world have landed on my face.’ Next year he will be 80, yet this year and next Scully seems to be everywhere at once. Tere will be five retrospectives of his work in 2025: in Barcelona, Hamburg, the Herzog & de Meuron-designed Parrish Art Museum on Long Island, in Korea, and China. One of the final speakers at the Art for Tomorrow conference in Venice in June, Scully was asked to define the role of art and the artist. ‘Te artist is the person who offers what could be. Can art change traffic conditions in big cities? No. Can art fix cars? No. Can art cure cancer? No. But art shows what is possible. Its job is to improve the human condition. Tis is what it is to be an artist,’ he said. ‘You’re a dreamer.’ Boom boom indeed.
Te Sean Scully exhibition finished on 22 September at the Église Saint-Nicolas in Caen as part of Normandie Impressioniste, a festival of exhibitions and events in France reflecting the inventive spirit of this artistic movement with a multidisciplinary and eclectic programme. Te host of special exhibitions included David Hockney: Normandism at the Musée des Beaux- Arts de Rouen; Photographier en Normandie at MuMa (Le musée d’Art moderne André- Malraux) in Le Havre; Art and Commerce at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen; Daniel Buren/ Toile-Toile/Voile at the Abbaye du Voeu in Cherbourg; and Édouard Vuillard, which is on show until 11 November at La Villa du Temps retrouvé in Cabourg. Paris 1874: Inventir l’impressionnisme is at the National Gallery of Art in Washington until 20 January 2025. In New York, stretching from Washington Heights to Lincoln Square, Sean Scully now has a series of seven sculptures, blocks and stacks punctuating the endless rhythm of Broadway, collectively entitled Broadway Shuffle that will be on show until March 2025.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149
