My research project focuses on Sean Scully an Irish-born American painter and printmaker who have twice been named a Turner Prize nominee. Scully was born in Dublin and raised in South London. According to wikipedia, Sean Scully "Studied at Croydon College of Art and Newcastle University. In 1972 Scully was awarded a Knox Fellowship to study art at Harvard University, and in 1975, based on the merit of his early paintings, Sully won a Harkness Fellowship, which allowed him to move permanently to New York."
By doing this research I have learned that when it comes to analyzing Sean Scully’s work of art, we can clear see that his work is composed of geometric shapes, primarily rectangles, arranged on horizontal and vertical axes evoking architectural forms. Also according to the source,"In its harmony and spirituality, his paintings recall the traditions of early European modernism, particularly the work of Henri Matisse and Piet Mondrian, and in mood and open-ended composition, Pollock’s and Rothko’s versions of abstract expressionism. Scully’s work reconciles European order with American vigor, or more specifically, how to combine Mondrian's clarity with Matisse's sensuousness, Pollock's rhythm, and Rothko's fluidity, a question to which he gives slightly different answers with each completed work."
Scully's paintings are often made up of a number of panels and are abstract. "Scully paints in oils, sometimes laying the paint on quite thickly to create textured surfaces. After a brief initial period of hard-edge painting Scully abandoned the masking tape while retaining his characteristic motif of the stripe which he has developed and refined over time." His paintings typically involve architectural constructions of abutting walls and panels of painted stripes."
By doing this research I have also learned about abstract paint and cubism, which is "art style where objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted forms, instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. Often the surfaces intersect at seemingly random angles, removing a coherent sense of depth. The background and object planes interpenetrate one another to create the shallow ambiguous space, one of cubism's distinct characteristics."
"Scully was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1989 and 1993. He has exhibited widely in Europe and the United States, and is represented in the permanent collections of a number of museums and public galleries, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., The Art Institute of Chicago, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the National Gallery of Australia, the Tate Gallery, London, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, and many other private and public collections worldwide. In 2006 Scully donated eight of his paintings to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, which opened an extension that year with a room dedicated to Scully's works."
What I tried to focus on this research was the main points of Scully’s life and work, as well learn about the cities that the lived, the type of art work that he works with; such as printmaking, oil paint, abstract, cubism, etc. This was a very interesting project to execute because it helped me a lot to learn much more about art and it’s importance, and also it inspired me a lot to continue on getting my bachelor in arts, which is what I love doing it. This research also helped me to get a lot of knowledge about the art field and its importance, I have learned about the principles of art and also that art surrounds us all the time, everywhere we go, which I thought about that before but could really see or understand how.
I think Sean Scully was a nice and good reference source for me to execute this research project because even though he was born on a foreign country, he was able to study in the US and be well known for what he does. Like him, I am also a foreign student and that was very interesting and inspiring for me to read and learn about Scully, and learning about his journey to get where he is today was an amazing experience.
In conclusion, when it comes to analyzing Sean Scully work "people most look deep and consider his background, since his work contain a lot of cultural and traditional content. Scully’s work derived from traditions of European early modernism, (Mondrian and Matisse), in it’s ideals for harmony and spirituality; and American late modernism (Pollock and Rothko), in its urge for large, open-ended compositions, expressing personal inner states."
Least but not least, it was a great experience putting this little research blog together, although I may not have elaborated a very illustrated and animated blog like I was planning to do, and might have not found so much about Sean Scully’s live and art work to talk about it here, I certainly have learned a lot throughout doing this project. I had no idea that from one thing anybody can learn many other things, by only extending our way of thoughts. It was a good project and I hope that most of you that are reading this can learn something from it and be inspired in somehow to continue your journey in order to reach your goals and desires in life.
Sources:
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Scully
SEAN SCULLY -- BODY OF WORK 1964-2011.12.15. Web. 14 Dec. 2011. <http://www.neoneoinc.com/en/home/>.
"Cubism." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 14 Dec. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubism>.
Sources:
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Scully
SEAN SCULLY -- BODY OF WORK 1964-2011.12.15. Web. 14 Dec. 2011. <http://www.neoneoinc.com/en/home/>.
"Cubism." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 14 Dec. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubism>.
