Sean Scully Looks at Politics in America
Question: How will America change under President Obama?
Scully: Well America causes gradually demographically moving to the left. It’s becoming more humane. This simple Republican slogans – “Spend and grow. Spend and grow.” You know drill, drill away the trouble all these and stuff, these dark clichés are not holding up even in middle America which is a bastion of conservatism based on the way America was made during the 19th Century of course. And I think that America would move towards the true deepening idea of making a society when nobody gets left behind. This is going to be the big project and we’ve had this before. We’ve had it with LBJ and so on. Also, on Civil Rights Act. But this is now going to be a deepening movement and we are going to be spending more on infrastructure because we have the available workforce, because we had a bad economy and I think it’s the inside of things that will get fixed. Not the outward appearance of things and I don’t think it’s going to be spectacular in it’s out witness but it’s going to have the lot more integrity to it. And America is moving towards a kind of maturity and these slides that are sometimes held at Europe like old Europe will be significantly less in currency.
Scully: Well America causes gradually demographically moving to the left. It’s becoming more humane. This simple Republican slogans – “Spend and grow. Spend and grow.” You know drill, drill away the trouble all these and stuff, these dark clichés are not holding up even in middle America which is a bastion of conservatism based on the way America was made during the 19th Century of course. And I think that America would move towards the true deepening idea of making a society when nobody gets left behind. This is going to be the big project and we’ve had this before. We’ve had it with LBJ and so on. Also, on Civil Rights Act. But this is now going to be a deepening movement and we are going to be spending more on infrastructure because we have the available workforce, because we had a bad economy and I think it’s the inside of things that will get fixed. Not the outward appearance of things and I don’t think it’s going to be spectacular in it’s out witness but it’s going to have the lot more integrity to it. And America is moving towards a kind of maturity and these slides that are sometimes held at Europe like old Europe will be significantly less in currency.
Question: When have you been proud to be an American?
Scully: I wouldn’t say I was proud to be an American. I’m proud to be an artist and I love America. There are many things in America that are great but I don’t like this I’m proud to be an American business. You know this flag waving business. I think this is a really bad scene and it is a poisoning the international family of human beings. I’m proud to be an American. I’m proud to be Irish. You should be proud to be a human being and to be able to interacts and have love and consideration for other human beings. You must sound proud to be a flag.
Scully: I wouldn’t say I was proud to be an American. I’m proud to be an artist and I love America. There are many things in America that are great but I don’t like this I’m proud to be an American business. You know this flag waving business. I think this is a really bad scene and it is a poisoning the international family of human beings. I’m proud to be an American. I’m proud to be Irish. You should be proud to be a human being and to be able to interacts and have love and consideration for other human beings. You must sound proud to be a flag.
Question: Are you an optimist?
Scully: Well I’m optimistic but that’s the question of nature and also I don’t really see much point in being pessimistic. If I’m wrong, if things don’t work out, we’re not able to make the world better it will matter, will it because we will be all dead. So, I do think that as Steven Hawkins says, the next 200 years is going to be very important. We have to evolved and understanding of ourselves and we have to move away with another reference to the flag from tribalism towards globalism. We have no choice but we have to manage our planet and we have to manage the planet that surrounds us in our spatial environment because we will colonize space if we are around.
Scully: Well I’m optimistic but that’s the question of nature and also I don’t really see much point in being pessimistic. If I’m wrong, if things don’t work out, we’re not able to make the world better it will matter, will it because we will be all dead. So, I do think that as Steven Hawkins says, the next 200 years is going to be very important. We have to evolved and understanding of ourselves and we have to move away with another reference to the flag from tribalism towards globalism. We have no choice but we have to manage our planet and we have to manage the planet that surrounds us in our spatial environment because we will colonize space if we are around.
Sean Scully Describes the Essence of Luxury
Question: What does luxury mean to you?
Scully: Luxury. Luxury is a question of time because life is time. Luxury is time and health. If you have time you can think and experience simultaneously and you have time to use that and I think that’s the greatest gift you can have, if you are fortunate enough to be sitting in the nice body.
Scully: Luxury. Luxury is a question of time because life is time. Luxury is time and health. If you have time you can think and experience simultaneously and you have time to use that and I think that’s the greatest gift you can have, if you are fortunate enough to be sitting in the nice body.
Question: What is your version of simple luxury?
Scully: Well, before I had a situation that I have now, I would say the ability to go to cinema was a big luxury because it cost money. I think there’s problem of having to acquire is something that we should resist. And we are terrorized into acquiring because we are terrorized by the consumer index. So, it goes back to this other point that I’m talking about which is material growth and over population is going to lead to a cataclysm at some point it must because Earth can’t hold a lot. It can’t endure the punishment that we inflict on it and I think if you look at what you have in terms of an environment just to go for a walk doesn’t cost anything. To go for a walk and look at the sky doesn’t cost you anything and that’s a beautiful moment of self locations, self revelation.
Scully: Well, before I had a situation that I have now, I would say the ability to go to cinema was a big luxury because it cost money. I think there’s problem of having to acquire is something that we should resist. And we are terrorized into acquiring because we are terrorized by the consumer index. So, it goes back to this other point that I’m talking about which is material growth and over population is going to lead to a cataclysm at some point it must because Earth can’t hold a lot. It can’t endure the punishment that we inflict on it and I think if you look at what you have in terms of an environment just to go for a walk doesn’t cost anything. To go for a walk and look at the sky doesn’t cost you anything and that’s a beautiful moment of self locations, self revelation.
Sean Scully Unpacks Art and Technology
Scully: Well, I think that it’s difficult to make a performance without a performer. You mentioned performance, you are only using, you are only using technology to record the performance. You can’t make the performance. Human being has to make the performance and painting is a primitive act in a certain sense, always has a very humble relationship between thinking and doing. It’s a very, it’s a very primal act to touch something and to color it. How that can be subjected to technology any more than already has been without actually stopping it from being painting I don’t know. If you look at cartoons for example, old cartoons from Walt Disney and new animated stuff. The animated stuff now has entirely different character so you can’t really changed something without ruining it and my guess is that it won’t happen because painting always manages to find the way to be dominant and it has ever since people been talking about the end of painting as lot waiting for God . Well, God never arrives.Sean Scully Explores Opportunities and Themes For the Next Generation of Artists
Question: What would you do if you were a young artist?
Scully: If I was young artist. If I was a young artist I probably go and live in Germany because I think the Germany is the motor of Europe and it’s the intellectual center of the art world. And Berlin is very similar to what New York was and New York maybe possibly at the end of it’s… burning life as an art center. You know New York maybe moving toward… to be what Paris was in the 60s’. It’s still a headquarter in a certain sense showing place but creativity, creativity I might moved to, yeah I might go to Berlin where you can get cheap places and it’s very important that when you are a young artist to have friends because you have to keep each other warmed. You have to hold each other. Learn from each other. Support each other. Make a society and keep each other warmed and that’s how you can get through.
Scully: If I was young artist. If I was a young artist I probably go and live in Germany because I think the Germany is the motor of Europe and it’s the intellectual center of the art world. And Berlin is very similar to what New York was and New York maybe possibly at the end of it’s… burning life as an art center. You know New York maybe moving toward… to be what Paris was in the 60s’. It’s still a headquarter in a certain sense showing place but creativity, creativity I might moved to, yeah I might go to Berlin where you can get cheap places and it’s very important that when you are a young artist to have friends because you have to keep each other warmed. You have to hold each other. Learn from each other. Support each other. Make a society and keep each other warmed and that’s how you can get through.
Question: What young artists do you like?
Scully: Well, I found the whole figurative art movement fascinating. I thought it was wonderful defensive painting and I don’t particularly make a distinction between abstraction and figuration in terms of what I like, what I’m attracted too and I’m very attracted to the life seek school painters near Ralph for example. I find very nice and then many others, there are many others and I thought that was a very interesting way of renovating an interesting painting. And what seems to happen, what was has happen so far is that as a strong sense of figuration. I don’t know if its’ over simplification. Well, any generalization is over simplification but in time of richness, wealth figurative art what is sometimes known as Pop Art nor less it’s derivation plainly Pop Art and so on which the young German painters where interested in. It tends to be in the foreground and very dominant because it’s popular and more people get involved but as art with us, to it’s trunk it gets harder and then abstraction seems to make a comeback and this is certainly what happen if you look back the 90s’ where there’s lot of abstraction. The 80s’ where there was a lot figuration and that was a époque of copious wealth. The 70s’ was abstract. The 60s’ was full out with Pop Art so this seems to happen and now we might be looking a lot of abstract painting.
Scully: Well, I found the whole figurative art movement fascinating. I thought it was wonderful defensive painting and I don’t particularly make a distinction between abstraction and figuration in terms of what I like, what I’m attracted too and I’m very attracted to the life seek school painters near Ralph for example. I find very nice and then many others, there are many others and I thought that was a very interesting way of renovating an interesting painting. And what seems to happen, what was has happen so far is that as a strong sense of figuration. I don’t know if its’ over simplification. Well, any generalization is over simplification but in time of richness, wealth figurative art what is sometimes known as Pop Art nor less it’s derivation plainly Pop Art and so on which the young German painters where interested in. It tends to be in the foreground and very dominant because it’s popular and more people get involved but as art with us, to it’s trunk it gets harder and then abstraction seems to make a comeback and this is certainly what happen if you look back the 90s’ where there’s lot of abstraction. The 80s’ where there was a lot figuration and that was a époque of copious wealth. The 70s’ was abstract. The 60s’ was full out with Pop Art so this seems to happen and now we might be looking a lot of abstract painting.
Question: What's the future of painting?
Scully: Well I think the next generation of artists; painter artists will be more concerned with a kind of regeneration of spiritual value, a reflective art as opposed to a populist, bombastic, obvious art. I think there will be more integrity in art because art and politics do hold hands. They do walk down the avenue together. I think we’re going to see that and we got that now in the United States. We got to move significantly to social order, social awareness, social caring, a sense of responsibility, repairing the extremely tarnished, wantonly tarnished image of America, outside America and a sense of global responsibility. The sense that we are all in the family together which is what John F. Kennedy talked about, we all breathe the same air, his famous remark. And I think we will return to that and the artists will be concern with a more reflective vision.
Scully: Well I think the next generation of artists; painter artists will be more concerned with a kind of regeneration of spiritual value, a reflective art as opposed to a populist, bombastic, obvious art. I think there will be more integrity in art because art and politics do hold hands. They do walk down the avenue together. I think we’re going to see that and we got that now in the United States. We got to move significantly to social order, social awareness, social caring, a sense of responsibility, repairing the extremely tarnished, wantonly tarnished image of America, outside America and a sense of global responsibility. The sense that we are all in the family together which is what John F. Kennedy talked about, we all breathe the same air, his famous remark. And I think we will return to that and the artists will be concern with a more reflective vision.
Sean Scully Explores the Risks of Artistic Life
Question: How do you find the courage to struggle?Scully: Well, if you have any option. If there’s a doubt, if you have other options, you know let say to be normal. I would say that you definitely should those options. So, you’re only really become an artist when you are driven into it or as Yate says, when you are hurt into art and all artists in some way are wounded I think. If you are compelled to be an artist, you will be an artist and I supposed I did it by having incredible amount of self-belief which comes from tremendous amount of arrogance and… but an arrogance is inform by a certain humility. And you’ve got a sense your own irrelevance because we are all replaceable and if you understand that you’re free but if your ego it becomes so rigid and desperate and fragile and battled, insistent, rigid you won’t, you won’t get through because you’ll break. You got to be like a tree that bends.
Sean Scully Debates Art in a Crisis
Question: How will art emerge from the economic crisis?
Scully: Well, you’re asking me that a very interesting moment. So, we on the economic crisis that has comeback to the level of 1930, so I need… superseded I guess by the levels of 1930s’. It’s a colossal moment in our time. Art depends on fact so before you have necessities and the necessities of life which are hospitals and houses and schools you are not going to have art. Art comes afterwards. Art enriches society and of course it helps to make it but when there’s a moment like this of austerity I think the art that has some kind of moral backbone or rigor in it is going to become more interesting to people because we are in the time of deep reflection. We have to think about our own folly and what we did going into Iraq to support Bush and all of his friends, that Halley Burton and now how we going to get out of that although, all the miseries that we cause in the world. And all the miseries now we are causing to ourselves So, I think that this is going to result in an art that is perhaps less to do with fun and less to do with frivolity.
Scully: Well, you’re asking me that a very interesting moment. So, we on the economic crisis that has comeback to the level of 1930, so I need… superseded I guess by the levels of 1930s’. It’s a colossal moment in our time. Art depends on fact so before you have necessities and the necessities of life which are hospitals and houses and schools you are not going to have art. Art comes afterwards. Art enriches society and of course it helps to make it but when there’s a moment like this of austerity I think the art that has some kind of moral backbone or rigor in it is going to become more interesting to people because we are in the time of deep reflection. We have to think about our own folly and what we did going into Iraq to support Bush and all of his friends, that Halley Burton and now how we going to get out of that although, all the miseries that we cause in the world. And all the miseries now we are causing to ourselves So, I think that this is going to result in an art that is perhaps less to do with fun and less to do with frivolity.
Question: Should we spend money on art during a recession?
Scully: Yeah, it’s a very pressing question because you are asking me a question that it’s a blanket question and it’s not particularize so to give up none specific answer to none specific question or question where you have not itemize the examples, I would have to say, yes it has to be included because you can’t kick art out of the cultural carpet, it’s part of it. But I understand, do you know when people are dying in the streets and they don’t have enough to eat, these proceeds out, there’s no question about it.
Scully: Yeah, it’s a very pressing question because you are asking me a question that it’s a blanket question and it’s not particularize so to give up none specific answer to none specific question or question where you have not itemize the examples, I would have to say, yes it has to be included because you can’t kick art out of the cultural carpet, it’s part of it. But I understand, do you know when people are dying in the streets and they don’t have enough to eat, these proceeds out, there’s no question about it.
Question: Does art benefit from crisis?
Scully: I would say that if you looked back the history of art, the most interesting art is made in times of great wealth. So, I would say it’s absolutely not true. A Renaissance came out of enormous wealth and power and so did the school in Venice. So, did abstract to expressionism, so did impressionism and on and on so it’s true that some interesting art will be made and I’ve endured a couple of recessions myself and I’ve noticed that in a sober time you make art perhaps less extroverted that relies less unsupported from the culture. There are less people around to give copious amounts of money to put things into museums. Less museums are going to be built so on and so on. Less artists are going to art school, etc. But if you look at the history of art that’s absolutely not true except if you want to talk about the beginning of a 20th Century and the invention of Dada.
Scully: I would say that if you looked back the history of art, the most interesting art is made in times of great wealth. So, I would say it’s absolutely not true. A Renaissance came out of enormous wealth and power and so did the school in Venice. So, did abstract to expressionism, so did impressionism and on and on so it’s true that some interesting art will be made and I’ve endured a couple of recessions myself and I’ve noticed that in a sober time you make art perhaps less extroverted that relies less unsupported from the culture. There are less people around to give copious amounts of money to put things into museums. Less museums are going to be built so on and so on. Less artists are going to art school, etc. But if you look at the history of art that’s absolutely not true except if you want to talk about the beginning of a 20th Century and the invention of Dada.
Question: Is art more relevant in a crisis?
Scully: Well, I would say that depends how much, how preoccupied the person is. How embattled the person is. If a person is really seriously embattled, if Somebody lost his job, I don’t know how much mental freedom, emotional freedom, flexibility you have to go strolling around in museums. You know, I think you might be too anxious. So the answer to that question is I don’t know but if somebody is feeling very embattled, other things become more important of course. Now, I once read a comment on Japan, we’re talking about Japan in the 50s’ following the Second World War and also between the wars and this writer, Japanese writer said that, the quality, the great spiritual inner strength of Japan depends on it’s poverty and that’s a very interesting remark. So, to say the poverty is bad of course it’s a difficult thing to support but copious amounts of money that are just frivolously wasted way that destroy the environment at the same time is also killing us because if we base our life and our future and our possibilities on economic growth, it’s the same saying we based our future on eating the planet which of course is an irreconcilable. Something will have to give at some point and we as human beings again I have to start to address that as we all now.
Scully: Well, I would say that depends how much, how preoccupied the person is. How embattled the person is. If a person is really seriously embattled, if Somebody lost his job, I don’t know how much mental freedom, emotional freedom, flexibility you have to go strolling around in museums. You know, I think you might be too anxious. So the answer to that question is I don’t know but if somebody is feeling very embattled, other things become more important of course. Now, I once read a comment on Japan, we’re talking about Japan in the 50s’ following the Second World War and also between the wars and this writer, Japanese writer said that, the quality, the great spiritual inner strength of Japan depends on it’s poverty and that’s a very interesting remark. So, to say the poverty is bad of course it’s a difficult thing to support but copious amounts of money that are just frivolously wasted way that destroy the environment at the same time is also killing us because if we base our life and our future and our possibilities on economic growth, it’s the same saying we based our future on eating the planet which of course is an irreconcilable. Something will have to give at some point and we as human beings again I have to start to address that as we all now.
Sean Scully on the Pissarro Painting He Will Never Own
Question: Is there a work you would never sell?Scully: Well, okay I got the perfect answer. It’s a painting by Pizarro and Pizarro live in South London near Crystal Palace. It’s a very high point, lot of impressionist live there and another movement in art, a name which I just forgot. And Pizarro painted a picture of Penge West Station. And Penge West Station was the station that I went to everyday when I went to work as s 15 year old apprentice and it was my ambition when I grew up to become a famous artist and buy that painting which I course never can but since you asked me hypothetical question, that’s the painting.
Sean Scully Deconstructs His Various Artistic Processes
Question: What is your process?
Scully: I… work along media. I worked in prints. I take photographs. I do little sketches. I do water colors, the pastels, small paintings, big paintings and of course most important I’m looking and thinking. When I start to painting for example I draw with the carbon on the end of the stick, charcoal on the end of the stick then I make the paint and it’s in buckets and now [waiting] to wet and hopefully I get it in one session, and if don’t I have the difficult task of waiting so I can revisit the painting which sometimes, well, no actually often hands and then I go back again. And I keep doing it until it’s, until it’s mine.
Scully: I… work along media. I worked in prints. I take photographs. I do little sketches. I do water colors, the pastels, small paintings, big paintings and of course most important I’m looking and thinking. When I start to painting for example I draw with the carbon on the end of the stick, charcoal on the end of the stick then I make the paint and it’s in buckets and now [waiting] to wet and hopefully I get it in one session, and if don’t I have the difficult task of waiting so I can revisit the painting which sometimes, well, no actually often hands and then I go back again. And I keep doing it until it’s, until it’s mine.
Question: Do you have a specific routine?
Scully: Yeah, I’m very habitual. I get up in the morning just like everybody else and then I do something that I guess it’s called getting ready. Because my work is extremely dependent of being ready because it is much a dance as it is visual. So, I do my correspondence. I mess around. I walked around. I play with the cat. I had my telephone calls. I go in the studio. I nearly start work. I leave the studio out. I go back in the studio again and I try to start work again and maybe on something small and then I’m kind of into it, maybe I stop for lunch and then I’m ready. So, afternoon is crescendo time.
Scully: Yeah, I’m very habitual. I get up in the morning just like everybody else and then I do something that I guess it’s called getting ready. Because my work is extremely dependent of being ready because it is much a dance as it is visual. So, I do my correspondence. I mess around. I walked around. I play with the cat. I had my telephone calls. I go in the studio. I nearly start work. I leave the studio out. I go back in the studio again and I try to start work again and maybe on something small and then I’m kind of into it, maybe I stop for lunch and then I’m ready. So, afternoon is crescendo time.
Sean Scully Reveals the Power of Abstract Art
Question: Why did you choose abstraction?
Scully: Well, it’s quite simple really I think a representational painter wants to show the things in the picture and with an abstract painting what in a sense you are trying to do is make everything happen at once. Now the other day I was in the Bon Art Exhibition. And Bon Art said whose Bon Art figurative painter of course and considered at one point retrograde and anti-madness. Working in the face of abstraction and cubism and hanging on to the figure, relentlessly hanging on to the figure. And he said I want to give the impression that when you walk into a room you see everything and nothing. And I would say that I want to show everything all at once. I once read a very interesting piece of graffiti when I was at the university which said time was invented to stop everything happening at once. She’s quite sweet. In an abstract painting it should be, could be possibly a moment of revelation and it’s a kind of thinking that takes you out of context, so that is his big advantage I think.
Question: What are you trying to accomplish as an artist?
Scully: Well, it means two things I’m saying two things there. I hold to the madness idea of evolution. I believe in human evolution and I believe in things getting better and our slow, dreadfully slow ascent out of the mud which we came and now all our struggle to locate and endure with a better angels and that’s a romantic, idealistic philosophy but that what stands behind my work. And what I’ve tried to do in my work is to use a language that everybody can understand. It’s meant to be universal. I understand of course it has a different patina and value in different cultures will register in a way that is distinct. However,, there should be something in it that everybody can recognize therefore in a sense, in order to do that, in order to make the most common vocabulary you need to simplify and that leads you into a situation where you could be dealing with kind of banality because you are looking for the common denominator. So, that’s the drawing part of my work. That’s what stands behind and it’s relates to architecture doors, windows, walls, repetitive building techniques and so on that populate the whole world. And then what I’ve done with that is I tried to connect it to the personal, so that’s what I mean of surfaces, personal - the treatment is personal. They are all made by me, by hand so they show human labor and human love of labor. Human dedication and I’ve tried to make it reflective of the evolution of one person, was making it as broad in terms of its matrix. It’s linguistic matrix as possible.
Source:
Scully: Well, it’s quite simple really I think a representational painter wants to show the things in the picture and with an abstract painting what in a sense you are trying to do is make everything happen at once. Now the other day I was in the Bon Art Exhibition. And Bon Art said whose Bon Art figurative painter of course and considered at one point retrograde and anti-madness. Working in the face of abstraction and cubism and hanging on to the figure, relentlessly hanging on to the figure. And he said I want to give the impression that when you walk into a room you see everything and nothing. And I would say that I want to show everything all at once. I once read a very interesting piece of graffiti when I was at the university which said time was invented to stop everything happening at once. She’s quite sweet. In an abstract painting it should be, could be possibly a moment of revelation and it’s a kind of thinking that takes you out of context, so that is his big advantage I think.
Sean Scully Deconstructs His Various Artistic Processes
Question: What is your process?
Scully: I… work along media. I worked in prints. I take photographs. I do little sketches. I do water colors, the pastels, small paintings, big paintings and of course most important I’m looking and thinking. When I start to painting for example I draw with the carbon on the end of the stick, charcoal on the end of the stick then I make the paint and it’s in buckets and now [waiting] to wet and hopefully I get it in one session, and if don’t I have the difficult task of waiting so I can revisit the painting which sometimes, well, no actually often hands and then I go back again. And I keep doing it until it’s, until it’s mine.
Scully: I… work along media. I worked in prints. I take photographs. I do little sketches. I do water colors, the pastels, small paintings, big paintings and of course most important I’m looking and thinking. When I start to painting for example I draw with the carbon on the end of the stick, charcoal on the end of the stick then I make the paint and it’s in buckets and now [waiting] to wet and hopefully I get it in one session, and if don’t I have the difficult task of waiting so I can revisit the painting which sometimes, well, no actually often hands and then I go back again. And I keep doing it until it’s, until it’s mine.
Question: Do you have a specific routine?
Scully: Yeah, I’m very habitual. I get up in the morning just like everybody else and then I do something that I guess it’s called getting ready. Because my work is extremely dependent of being ready because it is much a dance as it is visual. So, I do my correspondence. I mess around. I walked around. I play with the cat. I had my telephone calls. I go in the studio. I nearly start work. I leave the studio out. I go back in the studio again and I try to start work again and maybe on something small and then I’m kind of into it, maybe I stop for lunch and then I’m ready. So, afternoon is crescendo time.
Scully: Yeah, I’m very habitual. I get up in the morning just like everybody else and then I do something that I guess it’s called getting ready. Because my work is extremely dependent of being ready because it is much a dance as it is visual. So, I do my correspondence. I mess around. I walked around. I play with the cat. I had my telephone calls. I go in the studio. I nearly start work. I leave the studio out. I go back in the studio again and I try to start work again and maybe on something small and then I’m kind of into it, maybe I stop for lunch and then I’m ready. So, afternoon is crescendo time.
Sean Scully Examines His Evolution as an Artist
Question: Were you ever a representative painter?
Scully: Well I’m a representative painter. I am a representative of abstraction, just playing. Yeah, I was a representational painter when I was a young artist and I’m a trained figure drawer and that’s how I started out. One of the few people in America who worked, still work his way through figurative stuff into abstraction. I’ve done that journey.
Question: What was your first piece of art?
Scully: Well the first piece of art that I made was made with plaster of paris and it was made in the rubber mold. And I had the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene because I went to Catholic school and I am from an Irish milla and the other one now I had who is the same size as Mary Magdalene was a rabbit. And I used to make them and when they would come out of the mold without bubbles in them, perfect. Then I was extremely happy. I remember it was always very difficult to get them out of the mold. Of course my parents didn’t tell me about Vaseline and then I would paint them and then I would marry them. So, what I had married, the Virgin Mary with her rabbit boyfriend I would say that the artwork is complete.
Scully: Well the first piece of art that I made was made with plaster of paris and it was made in the rubber mold. And I had the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene because I went to Catholic school and I am from an Irish milla and the other one now I had who is the same size as Mary Magdalene was a rabbit. And I used to make them and when they would come out of the mold without bubbles in them, perfect. Then I was extremely happy. I remember it was always very difficult to get them out of the mold. Of course my parents didn’t tell me about Vaseline and then I would paint them and then I would marry them. So, what I had married, the Virgin Mary with her rabbit boyfriend I would say that the artwork is complete.
Question: How has your work evolved?
Scully: I would say it like all artists that endure and developed and evolved, it should be the journey from the given to the… to be given. So, in other words when you start out you are giving information because nothing comes out of nothing. And my work has gone from being quite linear to very much a question of the body.
Scully: I would say it like all artists that endure and developed and evolved, it should be the journey from the given to the… to be given. So, in other words when you start out you are giving information because nothing comes out of nothing. And my work has gone from being quite linear to very much a question of the body.
Question: How important is artistic training?
Scully: Well my artistic training was a paramount importance because when I’ve gone through my life and I faced moments of difficulty, how to continue, there’s no doubt in my mind that the options I have as an artist, as an artisan of an artist that’s an elevated form of artisanship come from my training because I have the ability to think my way through and work my way through.
Scully: Well my artistic training was a paramount importance because when I’ve gone through my life and I faced moments of difficulty, how to continue, there’s no doubt in my mind that the options I have as an artist, as an artisan of an artist that’s an elevated form of artisanship come from my training because I have the ability to think my way through and work my way through.
Question: Do you always advise artistic training?
Scully: I think, I think right now it is especially important; you can do things in a moment of rebellion lets say. Like for example, the Sex Pistols, one couldn’t play the guitar and now added to the temporary lets say very temporary charm of the music which is in fact no escape it’s tone. It’s a perfect example what I’m talking about and the issue of craft knowledge and the philosophical understanding of why things are the way they are? Why they’re dumb the way they are when they are supposed to represent is a consequence of training you can only get it that way.
Scully: I think, I think right now it is especially important; you can do things in a moment of rebellion lets say. Like for example, the Sex Pistols, one couldn’t play the guitar and now added to the temporary lets say very temporary charm of the music which is in fact no escape it’s tone. It’s a perfect example what I’m talking about and the issue of craft knowledge and the philosophical understanding of why things are the way they are? Why they’re dumb the way they are when they are supposed to represent is a consequence of training you can only get it that way.
Question: What are your artistic influences?
Scully: Well, yeah there are… there a lot of painters and of course from generation moved from the working classes into rock and roll and blues, true blues, the appropriation of blues and folk music into rock and roll. So, all of these things have influenced me but to say it quick in terms of painting it goes through the history of Western Art reprehensibly which is very much a question of the development of a surface I would say and that includes Jimi, Bui, Raphael, Velasquez, Rivera, Monet and Manet and so on.
Scully: Well, yeah there are… there a lot of painters and of course from generation moved from the working classes into rock and roll and blues, true blues, the appropriation of blues and folk music into rock and roll. So, all of these things have influenced me but to say it quick in terms of painting it goes through the history of Western Art reprehensibly which is very much a question of the development of a surface I would say and that includes Jimi, Bui, Raphael, Velasquez, Rivera, Monet and Manet and so on.
Question: What are your unexpected influences?
Scully: Well, yeah I have… I have 3 pieces of art in front of my building, in my lobby, my studio. One is an aboriginal painting by Dorothy Napangardi. She paints salt lines very dry work. I went nut when I saw over the aboriginal artist when I was in Australia and spent significantly more money than I should have and then there are some performance artist alike like Ana Mendieta and I love the work of Agnes Martin but I think people would probably imagine that I would. It’s a very different sensibility of course she’s a like… puritanical linear artist and I’m a sensual body artist but how surprising is that to the people I don’t know. I’m not sure. People are surprise when I tell them what my favorite book is. Which is Out of Africa by Karen Blixen, Isak Dinesen, people always seems to be surprise I don’t know why. My first favorite book was the Scarlet Pimpernel but that was the first book I had ever read when I was 16. I didn’t read a book till I was 16.
The Personal Artistic Philosophy of Sean Scully
Question: What are you trying to accomplish as an artist?
Scully: Well, it means two things I’m saying two things there. I hold to the madness idea of evolution. I believe in human evolution and I believe in things getting better and our slow, dreadfully slow ascent out of the mud which we came and now all our struggle to locate and endure with a better angels and that’s a romantic, idealistic philosophy but that what stands behind my work. And what I’ve tried to do in my work is to use a language that everybody can understand. It’s meant to be universal. I understand of course it has a different patina and value in different cultures will register in a way that is distinct. However,, there should be something in it that everybody can recognize therefore in a sense, in order to do that, in order to make the most common vocabulary you need to simplify and that leads you into a situation where you could be dealing with kind of banality because you are looking for the common denominator. So, that’s the drawing part of my work. That’s what stands behind and it’s relates to architecture doors, windows, walls, repetitive building techniques and so on that populate the whole world. And then what I’ve done with that is I tried to connect it to the personal, so that’s what I mean of surfaces, personal - the treatment is personal. They are all made by me, by hand so they show human labor and human love of labor. Human dedication and I’ve tried to make it reflective of the evolution of one person, was making it as broad in terms of its matrix. It’s linguistic matrix as possible.
Source:
"Sean Scully | Artist | Big Think." Big Think | Blogs, Articles and Videos from the World's Top Thinkers and Leaders. Web. 08 Nov. 2011. <http://bigthink.com/seanscully>.
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