Tag: internationalartists

Sean Scully

came up for me recently when writing Competition, as I was rereading my initial blog about Astrid and John Yau’s essay Whose Stripe Is It, Anyway? The subtitle conveys that Astrid was told that she could not paint stripes because Sean Scully and Frank Stella had done so before her (which I agree with John is a patently foolish statement).

So I’ve never blogged about Mr Scully. Reason being? I bet a number of you remember the Mr Shachter putting Scully on blast for a mind-boggling degree of self-regard in a BBC film about his life. In particular, the zinger in the article is that Scully says in the film “I’m the Donald Trump of the Art World.” Well I know the Brits were going through Brexit and Boris Johnson at the time (2019), and the amount of insensitivity it took to utter that really blew my mind and candidly broke my heart. 

Why? I’ve been moved by Scully’s work.  The first time I ever saw one in person was at the Met, and I remember coming around the corner to encounter a really large one in subdued colors on a dark wall and being almost overwhelmed with melancholy. He is often compared to Rothko, and my emotional experience of that work made it clear why. It was many years later that I also found myself inspired by his words – his Mark Rothko: Corps de-lumiere had a good deal of influence on me during my time in graduate school, as I struggled to describe how painting could “speak” to something directly, and in a way that words never could.

Have you ever seen his photography* btw???

So I am feeling grateful that a recent essay gave me a reason to revisit and sort through these feelings. I have said for many years now that part of the obligation that writers and teachers have in these types of situations is to point directly at the contradictions, and make the lesson that it is possible for canonic artists to be complex, flawed and gifted, as a way for us all to have a better understanding of the world and our selves.

*Also, and have you seen Ellsworth Kelly’s?

#seanscully

Marion Griese

work is orchestrated with a collection of colours, shapes, and lines that have caught her eyes as she moves through daily life. These elements have slowly become the vocabulary she uses to tell her stories and give shape to her personal impressions of the world around her. Her hope is that her art becomes a space for the viewer to transcend the moment and to experience a sense of relief and inspiration, as a favourite piece of music might.

#mariongriese

Gwenaël Kerlidou

has actually been mentioned here before, when he wrote for TUSSLE Christopher. They’re also a good writer: (from his statement) “Abstraction, now more than ever, has become an exercise in painting in tongues, pulling both painter and viewer toward a practice of highly idiosyncratic systems of signs, and paradoxically seems to be at the moment one of the best tuned visual instrument to explore our diverse commonalities.” He is one of the ten artists Saul Ostrow included in Building Models.

More (yeah I know, they’re pretty fantastic)

#gwenaelkerlidou