Art Eyewitness Book Review How Painting Happens by Martin Gayford

How Painting Happens (and why it matters)

By Martin Gayford

Thames & Hudson/384 pages/$45
 

Reviewed by Ed Voves

Original photos by Anne Lloyd

The greatest compliment which can be paid to the author of an art book is that the book motivates readers to go to their local museum and see actual works of art.

This act of seeing entails more than gazing at a painting or sculpture for 27.2 seconds. Reputedly, this is the viewing time per work of art for the average museum goer at The Met.

Seeing art takes a lot more time and considerably more effort. Seeing art translates into a concerted eye-to-brain process- looking, analysis, perception and - hopefully - enlightenment.

 

Anne Lloyd, (Photo 2023)

Gallery view of Van Gogh's Cypresses at the Metropolitan Museum, 

showing Van Gogh's Landscape from Saint-Rémy, 1889

The second greatest compliment for the author of an art book is that motivated readers will refer back to his or her book for further reading and reflection. The volume in question may indeed become a trusted companion, perhaps honored with a place on a bed-side book shelf.

Both compliments apply to Martin Gayford’s How Painting Happens (and why it matters), just published by Thames and Hudson.

 

The title of Gayford’s new book states its theme directly and succinctly. Gayford surveys the process of painting from conception to fulfillment, from preliminary sketch to deciding when – or if – the painting is finished.

It is important to note that How Painting Happens is not a technical treatise. True, there are a few “pointers” here for the taking. Gayford describes the novel technique of Gerhard Richter when he wishes to “lose control” of a painting, that is to paint spontaneously. To do that, Richter uses a squeegee rather than a brush.

Gayford states that “these products of interaction between his (Richter’s) eye, mind, hands and arms, and the squashing, blurring power of a piece of plastic, can be overwhelmingly beautiful.”

Intrepid painters may want to give Richter’s squeegee a try. This technique sounds more than a little risky, so I think I’ll stick to magic markers.

Instead of “how to”, the key concept of How Painting Happens is “dialogue.”

David Dawson, Photo (2018)

David Hockney and Martin Gayford in conversation.

Photo from Spring Cannot be Cancelled (Thames & Hudson, 2021)

Gayford is the premier interviewer of the visual arts scene of our times. Spring Cannot be Cancelled, the 2021 book recording Gayford's friendship with David  Hockney over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, is a poignant and powerful testament to the human spirit.

Gayford has over three decades of experience speaking to artists, putting them at ease while encouraging them to discuss their viewpoints, trials, tribulations and achievements. Gayford draws on these interviews to inform the text of this book.

“Inform” is indeed the correct verb form for describing Gayford’s methodology. How Painting Happens is no “cut and paste” reassembling of old newspaper clippings. Rather, the comments and insights of now-legendary figures like Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon, Paula Rego and Frank Stella are combined with those of contemporary painters to create a “voice” for art.

 

El Greco, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, 1586

Moreover, this “voice” resonates with what the Old Masters of painting, from Titian and El Greco to Picasso and Matisse, said and did. They make their presence felt chiefly through the comments of the artists whom Gayford interviewed. This gives depth of insight to How Painting Happens similar to the way that painting in oils builds layer upon layer to create the desired image.

Gayford weaves together the strands of many voices with commentary founded upon his deep-seated knowledge of art history. This produces a sense of continuity and shared purpose which carries through the discussion of the many genres of painting and historical eras surveyed in this remarkable book.

The “voice” we hear in How Painting Happens is the voice of experiences, founded upon a shared conviction and leading to the same, unshakable, conclusion:

Painting matters… Art matters and it has been doing so for a very long time.

In his discussion of the origin and use of color pigments, Gayford alludes to the alchemists. The aim of these Renaissance-era savants was to transform base metals into gold. Painters had beaten them to a comparable goal by many thousands of years.

Ochre, various forms of oxides dug from the soil beneath human feet, was the key component of the first paint. When mixed with fat from animal bone marrow and heated, ochre pigments enabled prehistoric artists to create astonishing masterpieces such as the cave murals at Chauvet and Lascaux. Is there a greater alchemy than this?

 

Aurochs, horses and deer painted on a cave at Lascaux.

Upper Paleolithic era, c. 17,300 years ago. Photo (2006)

The meaning of these cavalcades of painted aurochs, reindeer and wild horses has been much debated. Almost certainly, these scenes related to hunting, either invocations of divine assistance prior to a foray in search of game or to a celebration afterwards. In the case of the stenciled hand-prints at the Cueva de las Manos, located in Patagonia at the southern tip of South America, the statement was direct and unequivocal.

 “I exist.”

 

Mariano Cecowski, Photo (2005)

Hands at the Cueva de las Manos (The Cave of Hands), Argentina

No one knows the exact identity of the ancient painters in Cueva de las Manos. Yet modern-day artists can speak for them because the essential message of art never changes. Acknowledging the insights of the contemporary British painter, Jenny Saville, Gayford notes that the Cueva de las Manos handprints “are an arresting way of proclaiming the same message … that Van Gogh was transmitting with his oils and brushes: I exist.”

 

Anne Lloyd, (Photo 2023)

Gallery view of Van Gogh's Cypresses at The Met, 

showing Van Gogh's The Starry Night, 1889

Gayford, as noted above, has interviewed an impressive number of painters, discussing with them the steps they took, from blank canvas to gallery wall, to affirm their lives and art. So numerous are the respondents to Gayford’s inquiries that to try and encompass the contributions of all would be foolhardy. Instead, I will focus upon Gayford’s exchanges with two painters in order to convey a sense of the whole extraordinary enterprise.

Sean Scully is a perfect fit for a Gayford interview - and inclusion in How Painting Matters. Artist and author are near contemporaries, both steeped in the theory and practice of art, of the present and the past ... and with an eye to the future.

Ed Voves, (Photo 2022)

Sean Scully at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Spring 2022

Scully was born in Dublin in 1945. His family moved to London when he was boy and he was trained to work in the construction industry. Scully related to Gayford that he would spend his thirty-minute lunch break, making a dash to the Tate Gallery on a moped, to commune with his favorite painting. 

Vincent van Gogh, Van Gogh's Chair, 1888

Standing in front of Van Gogh's Chair in his splattered overalls, Scully was moved to make a career change. From working with plaster, he chose to become a "worker" in paint. 

Scully's timing was not the most propitious to take-up painting. By the time his career was launched, 1970's Minimalism was in full-swing. Representational art of any kind was "out" and Abstraction held in low repute. After moving to New York, Scully rebelled against "what you see is what you get." And he switched from quick-drying acrylics back to painting in oils.

In a fascinating discussion with Gayford, Scully related that painting with acrylics had enabled his "work to become, let's say, more conceptual." Then, in the 1980's, he was inspired to create work that was "more sensual, more emotional, more romantic, more experiential and less programmatic."

The resulting transition, shifting from acrylics to oil paint, was a near disaster. Scully recounted how:

It was one of the most difficult things I've ever done. I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown because oil paint was so unruly. It's like the difference between walking and riding a horse - especially the way I ride a horse, which is clueless. You can't control it. Even now, I don't control it entirely. That's what's so beautiful about it.

The ordeal of recalibrating back to oil paints has enabled Scully to create an impressive oeuvre, "more experiential and less programmatic" over the subsequent years. These include his signature Landline series. One of Scully's Landline paintings is included as a full page illustration in How Painting Happens. This work is entitled Landline Star (2017).

Ed Voves, (Photo 2022)

Gallery view of Sean Scully: the Shape of Ideas at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, showing Scully's Landline North Blue, 2014

I had the great, good fortune to meet Sean Scully at the press preview of the magnificent retrospective of his work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2022.  A Landline painting similar to Landline Star was on view, Landline North Blue (2014). In my review, I described this work as an abstract landscape, in the spirit of Caspar David Friedrich.

Ed Voves, (Photo 2022)

Sean Scully's Landline North Blue, 2014

The experience of beholding this powerful painting and discussing it with Scully ranks as one of the most memorable events in my evolving appreciation of art. But it was made even more meaningful by reading the Gayford/Scully dialogue in How Painting Happens. It is truly a case study of the "uses of adversity." 

One of the most vital tasks of a writer involved in cultural commentary and analysis is to make new or unfamiliar art forms intelligible to general readers. With Sean Scully, Gayford was able to find common ground and mutual understanding fairly easily. In his conversation with Korean artist, Lee Ufan, it was Gayford's turn to cope with a bit of adversity.

Andrew Tupalev, Portrait of Lee Ufan, 2014

Lee Ufan, born in 1936, is not only one of the major painters and sculptors of modern Korea, but is a leader of the philosophical movement in Korea and Japan known as Mono-ha. This "school of things" explores the interface of natural and man-made objects. Lee Ufan has been a strong critic of the rapid and heedless Westernization of Asia.

Ed Voves, (Photo 2024)

Lee Ufan's From Line, 1979, displayed at the Metropolitan Museum 

Lee Ufan's signature paintings are known by a common title, From Line. 

These paintings are generally similar: uniform strokes of blue cobalt-cadmium pigment which begin with intense coloration at the top of the canvas, gradually losing saturation in the downward sweep, until only ghostly shadow-like forms remain. 

As described by Gayford, Lee's working procedure is like that of Michelangelo in reverse. The canvas is placed on the floor and Lee paints, face down, from "a wooden board set-up, like a bridge, above it."

Ed Voves, (Photo 2024)

Detail of Lee Ufan's From Line, 1979

Prior to reading How Painting Happens, I had never seen a Lee Ufan From Line painting. This made it difficult to follow Gayford's exchange with Lee. 

MOMA has a From Line in its collection but it is not currently on view. Fortunately, The Met's recent exhibition of Korean art, Lineages, displayed a From Line painting similar to the one chosen to illustrate How Painting Happens. I was able to see this painting, confirming its status as a remarkable, hard-to-fathom work of art - at least for a Westerner.

Gayford evidently had a similar reaction and his attempts to draw-out some form of intelligible meaning (again to Westerners) met with a barrage of polite rebuttals from Lee Ufan:

Maybe you don’t really understand what I’m doing. I put some paint on the brush then make one, two, three, four strokes, and as I do so, with each stroke, the paint becomes fainter. Perhaps you imagine I control my breathing just during one stroke, but that’s not the case. With one breath, I make several strokes. That’s very important... Because this is the result of a long, long period of training. It is the same as the way an athlete trains; artists train themselves as well.

After further discussion, Gayford finally grasped that when Lee paints, he is "immersing" himself into the work. 

"I am inside the canvas," Lee says. He is painting, not only with blue cobalt-cadmium paint, but with his breath, his life force, his body.

"The body is crucial, our body does not belong just to us. It creates a relationship with the world. And that relationship is the most interesting thing of all."

These then, are just two of the amazing cast of characters summoned by Martin Gayford to the pages of How Painting Happens. Individually and collectively, they make the case of why art matters. They do so in terms which validate the hand-painters of Cueva de las Manos, ten thousand years ago, and Lee Ufan in the world of today.

Anne Lloyd, (Photo 2023)

Gallery view of Van Gogh's Cypresses at the Metropoitan Museum of Art, 

showing Van Gogh's Country Road in Provence by Night, 1890

Art affirms our existence. Art records the relationship of our body, "which does not belong just to us", with the world.

And so, in the end does Martin Gayford's How Painting Happens. It affirms life and testifies to our relationship with the world.

Gayford's book, a work of art in its own right, has already claimed a place on my bed-side book shelf. It is wedged in beside Christopher De Hamel’s Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts and The Oxford Book of Essays. But How Painting Happens (and why it matters) is not a book to rest on its laurels and it won't be sitting on that shelf, gathering dust, for long.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved.

Original photography, copyright of Ed Voves and Anne Lloyd. Book cover, courtesy of Thames and Hudson.

Introductory Image: Diego Velazquez (Spanish) Self-Portrait, detail from Las Meninas, 1656. Oil on canvas: 318 cm × 276 cm (125.2 in × 108.7 in) Museo del Prado, Madrid. This image comes from the web site of National Gallery, London.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2023) Gallery view of Van Gogh's Cypresses, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, showing Van Gogh's  Landscape from Saint-Rémy. 27 3/4 × 34 7/8 in. (70.5 × 88.5 cm) Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

David Dawson, Photo (2018) David Hockney and Martin Gayford in conversation. Photo from Spring Cannot be Cancelled (Thames & Hudson, 2021)

El Greco, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, 1586.  Oil on canvas: 480 cm × 360 cm (190 in × 140 in). Church of Santo Tomé, Toledo Spain.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Burial_of_the_Count_of_Orgaz#/media/File:El_Greco_-_The_Burial_of_the_Count_of_Orgaz.JPG

Unknown photographer (EU), Photo (2006) Aurochs, horses and deer painted on a cave at Lascaux. Upper Paleolithic era, c. 17,300 years ago. Photo licensed under Creative commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lascaux_painting.jpg

Mariano Cecowski Photo (2005) Hands at the Cuevas de las Manos (The Cave of Hands), 2005. Photo licensed under Creative Commons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SantaCruz-CuevaManos-P2210651b.jpg

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2023) Gallery view of Van Gogh's Cypresses, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, showing Van Gogh's The Starry Night, 1889. Oil on canvas. 29 x 36 1/4" (73.7 x 92.1 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Sean Scully at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Spring 2022.

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch,1853-1890) Van Gogh's Chair, 1888. Oil on canvas: 91.8 × 73 cm. National Gallery, London. NG3862

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Gallery view of Sean Scully: the Shape of Ideas at Philadelphia Museum of Art, showing Scully's Landline North Blue, 2014.

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Sean Scully’s Landline North Blue, 2014. Oil on Aluminum: 7 feet 1 inches × 6 feet 3 inches (215.9 × 190.5 cm). Forman Family Collection.

Andrew Tupelvev, Photo (2014) Lee Ufan at the opening of artist's personal exhibition at Gary Tatintsian Gallery, November 13, 2014. Photo licensed under Creative Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lee_Ufan.jpg

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) Lee Ufan’s From Line, 1979. Displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Oil on canvas: 76 3/16 in. × 8 ft. 5 15/16 in. (193.5 × 259 cm) Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul. #LL.001

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2023) Vincent van Gogh’s County Road in Provence by Night, 1890. Oil on canvas: 35 3/8 x 28 3/8 in. (90.6 x 72 cm) Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands

 

Sean Scully: the Shape of Ideas at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

 

Sean Scully: the Shape of Ideas

 The Philadelphia Museum of Art

April 11, 2022 - July 31, 2022

Reviewed by Ed Voves

Sean Scully came of age as an artist during the 1970's, just at the moment when painting was proclaimed to be "dead." Minimalism, taking its cue from the work of Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967), discarded narrative content, spiritual meaning and the inner life of art.

"The more stuff in it," Reinhardt had written, "the busier the work of art, the worse it is. 'More is less.'"

How is a young artist, trying to make his or her mark, to contend with such absolutist affirmations? How can painters, in the 1970's or now, express themselves when art is defined by "elders and betters" of the preceding generation? It is an unenviable position, rather like standing on a riverbank, watching as a bridge is burned before you can cross.

A new exhibition, Sean Scully: the Shape of Ideas at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, recounts how Scully made it to the opposite shore in a courageous act of artistic self-determination.

Beginning with several galleries devoted to Scully's prodigious skill in printmaking, the retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art charts the course of Scully's five-decades long career, still very much a work in progress. From early Minimalist works to a 2021 painting devoted to the emotional effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the exhibition shows how Scully has raised Abstract art to new levels of achievement, aesthetic and spiritual.

Sean Scully, Black Blue Window, 2021

It should come as no surprise that Scully devoted a work to the theme of Covid-19. A deeply sensitive and humane man, Scully placed a dark, disturbing form in the center of Black Blue Window. The title identifies it as a window, a portal, but whether it looks onto the land of the living or the dead, is left for the viewer to decide.

The global crisis of Covid-19 directly impinged on the Scully exhibition. Sean Scully: the Shape of Ideas was originally was scheduled to open in Philadelphia during 2020, following its debut at the Museum of Modern Art of Fort Worth, Texas. With great determination, Scully, Amada Sroka and Timothy Rub, curators at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, persevered in mounting this splendid display of Abstract art and ideas.

                                       Ed Voves (Photo (2022)                                     

From left, Amada Sroka, Sean Scully & Timothy Rub 

Before proceeding with this review, let us note that Timothy Rub, as well working on the Sean Scully exhibit, guided the Philadelphia Museum of Art through its momentous redesign project. Now serving as Director Emeritus of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Rub is capping-off his long years of inspired leadership with this curatorial triumph.

Struggle and hard-won success are constant themes of Sean Scully's life. He was born in Dublin in 1945, but raised in London during the bleak post-Blitz years. At the press preview, Scully discussed his early life. Scully recounted how he worked in the construction trade as a youth, spending his lunch hour at the Tate Gallery studying the masterpieces in its galleries. 

                                         Ed Voves (Photo (2022)                                      Sean Scully lecturing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

After many rejections, Scully finally secured a place at the Croyden College of Art in London. He followed his study at Croyden with a fellowship at Harvard University in 1972. This introduction to the American art scene led Scully to move to the U.S. in 1975.

Sculley's early Minimalist work is surveyed in several paintings in the exhibition. I was particularly impressed - and bemused - by Green Light, painted during the period of Scully's fellowship year at Harvard. Scully used tape to map out grid patterns. He then used spray paint to create layered stripes and blocks of color, based upon a limited palate of greens, yellow and black. The result is a hypnotic visual pattern which draws the viewer's gaze to the grid and then locks it down.

According to the canon of Minimalism, the process of viewing a work such as  Green Light is based upon the sensory experience of pure color and pure form. There is no story, much less a moral to the story. "What you see," in the words of Frank Stella, "is what you get."

Perhaps such an interface was Scully's objective back in his younger days. Yet, what struck me immediately about Green Light was how it manifested the sense of alienation felt by so many people during the 1970's. 

Reflecting upon Green Light, I remembered my own shock at reading reviews of B.F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity, published in 1971. This was the "big" book of the years when Scully first came to the U.S. Celebrated by some, reviled by others, Beyond Freedom and Dignity asserted that the future of humankind would not be the Age of Aquarius but rather an era of scientific regimentation.

Sean Scully, Green Light, 1972-1973

Green Light strikes me as a jarring visualization of Skinner's world view, of society determined by the workings of a "technology of human behavior" rather than being influenced by "states of mind or feelings."

Was Scully painting Green Light with Skinner's authoritarian theories in mind?There are no indications of a direct or conscious link. Yet, Scully had to be aware of Beyond Freedom and Dignity. He is a well-read man, drawing insights and impressions from all points of the cultural compass. 

I certainly believe that beneath the tape-measured grid and layers of spray paint of Green Light, there are "states of mind or feeling" that could not be repressed by the creed of Minimalism.

For some years after Green Light, Scully continued to devote himself to Minimalist works. The inevitable revolt came in 1981 with Backs and Fronts. 

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Sean Scully's Backs and Fronts, 1981

Though a work of Abstract art, Backs and Fronts is based on depths of feeling and social observation. In his comments at the press preview at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Scully said that the painting reflects the hyper-competitive, dog-eat-dog, world of New York City which he witnessed while pursuing his art career.

Backs and Fronts is a monumental work, 8 × 20 feet (243.8 × 609.6 cm). It consists of eleven linen and canvas panels, of different sizes, joined together.

Backs and Fronts was never intended as a painting of stripes about painting stripes. Initially conceived as an homage to Picasso's Three Musicians, Scully's work took on a life of its own until it became a major assertion of art in its time-honored sense, as a bold statement of an artist's views and beliefs.

 

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Detail of Sean Scully's Backs and Fronts, 1981

The stripes we see in Backs and Fronts confront and clash with each other at every turn. At no point, do we see the slightest hint of conjoined activity, of "socially modified behavior." Robert Hughes noted of Scully's signature stripes that they possessed a feeling that was "something fierce, concrete and obsessive, with a grandeur shaded by awkwardness..."

If Backs and Fronts has a message, was Scully applauding the unrestrained individualism of American society, New York-style, or urging restraint and caution? Looking at his works since this pivotal, breakthrough painting, the act of questioning appears to be far more important to Scully than providing "one-size-fits-all" answers.

Scully has said that he is "very interested in disharmony because I want the painting to be unresolved but not unresolvable. And I want the person looking at it to try and put it together..." 

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Sean Scully's The Fall (left) and Falling Wrong

"I made a painting called Falling Wrong and someone asked me why and I said, 'Cause falling right only has one possibility... but falling wrong has a thousand options.' "

Pale Fire, 1988, is another work in the exhibition which challenges the imagination of the viewer. It takes its title from Vladimir Nabokov's 1962 novel, a complex story involving scholarly commentary on a 999-line epic poem. The final line of the poem is missing or perhaps never written, as the poet had died mysteriously. It is never clear whether the analytical comments resolve the riddle of the poem or, rather, confuse the issue. 

Sean Scully, Pale Fire, 1988

Scully's Pale Fire reflects the enigma of the novel. The bold, vertical bands of red and white are disrupted by an inset block of narrow black and ochre stripes. These look like the bars on a prison window, keeping the inner meaning of the painting under lock and key. If this is indeed so, Scully reserves the answer for us to decide.

Many of the titles of Scully's paintings may leave viewers wondering as to their meaning. A strong sense of organic life, however, provides the foundation of Scully's art. He visited Morocco early in his career, where he observed traditional forms of craft-making, especially the making of vividly- hued fabrics. This experience enriched his sense of color creation. Later, visits to Mexico and to historic sites like the isle of Iona, birth-site of Christianity in Scotland, further influenced his life and art.

From his visits to Mexico, Scully conceived the idea of carefully conceived and orchestrated blocks of color, "walls of light." These are most impressive, but, to do them justice, you really have to spend time in their presence. 

                                           Ed Voves, Photo (2022)                                      Gallery view of Sean Scully: the Shape of Ideas. The works shown are Pink Blue, at left, and the four panels of Land Sea Sky

The color of these works, carefully modulated, radiates from the gallery walls. And in settings like the Dorrance Gallery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Scully's paintings seem to hover in mid-air, exerting a spiritual presence that is almost palpable.

                                             Ed Voves, Photo (2022)                                              From left, Sean Scully's Between You and Me and Vita Duplex

As noted earlier, Scully often places insets of contrasting color tones, like the block of dark stripes in Pale Fire, in unusual, unsettling positions on his canvases. These may confound or simply amaze the viewer, as in the blocks of gray-blue, streaked and shadowed with dusky brown, which appear, like specters of a Whistler nocturne, in Vita Duplex, 1994.

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Detail of Sean Scully's Vita Duplex

Over the last ten years, Scully has created a number of works bearing "Landline" in the title. These are best appreciated as Abtract "landscapes" in the way that depictions of the natural environment affect our mood, emotions and perception of the world around us. Thus, these Landlines are more in the spirit of paintings by J.M.W. Turner than Mark Rothko.

Sean Scully, Landline Pink, 2013

Being a life-long fan of Turner's art, I was much impressed with the Landlines on view in the exhibition. The painting in this series which most appealed to me, however, was more in keeping with the oeuvre of another Romantic-era master, Caspar David Friedrich. I determined to get a photo of Scully as he commented upon this painting, Landline North Blue (2014).

My digital camera had other ideas and try though I might, adjusting the settings, I could not get it to work. The opportunity passed - or seemed to.

Fortunately, Mr. Scully graciously agreed to return to pose before Landline North Blue for one more try after the press preview had concluded. This time, the camera worked and I was able to get a couple quick snaps.

When I got home to look over my pictures, I realized that one of the photos of Sean Scully standing before Landline North Blue was better than I had expected. Indeed, it was better than I could have hoped.

                                       Ed Voves, Photo (2022)                                      Sean Scully posing in front of Landline North Blue

Here is Sean Scully standing before his magnificent painting, his face composed in meditative reflection. His eyes are focused intently, as he ponders how to translate his thoughts into gestured brushstrokes. 

This is how an artist looks, as he shapes his ideas, thus validating the title of this wonderful exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This is the face that the painting on the easel "sees" as Sean Scully transforms it from a length of canvas or linen into a "wall" of light, resonating with the breath of life and spirit. 

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved                                                                                           

Images courtesy of the  Philadelphia Museum of Art 

Introductory Image: Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Sean Scully's Falling Wrong, 1985. Oil on Linen: 8 × 9 feet (243.8 × 274.3 cm), Collection of the Artist.

Sean Scully (American, born Ireland, 1945) Black Blue Window, 2021. Oil on aluminum: 7 feet 1 inches × 6 feet 3 inches × 2 inches (215.9 × 190.5 × 5.1 cm). Private Lender.

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Sean Scully and the curators of the Sean Scully: the Shape of Ideas exhibition. From left: Amada Sroka, Sean Scully, and Timothy Rub, Director Emeritus of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Gallery view of the Sean Scully: Shape of Ideas exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Sean Scully lecturing at the press preview.

Sean Scully (American, born Ireland, 1945) Green Light, 1972-1973. Acrylic on canvas: 8 feet 1/2 inches × 10 feet 6 3/4 inches (245.1 × 321.9 cm) . Private Collection. 

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Sean Scully's Backs and Fronts, 1981. Oil on linen and canvas: 8 × 20 feet (243.8 × 609.6 cm). Collection of the Artist.

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Detail of Sean Scully's Backs and Fronts, 1981. 

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Sean Scully's The Fall, 1983, Oil on canvas: 9 feet 8 inches × 8 feet 5/8 inches × 7 1/2 inches (294.6 × 245.4 × 19.1 cm), and  Falling Wrong, 1985. Oil on Linen: 8 × 9 feet (243.8 × 274.3 cm), Collection of the Artist.

Sean Scully (American, born Ireland, 1945) Pale Fire, 1988. Oil on linen: 8 feet × 12 feet 2 1/2 inches (243.8 × 372.1 cm). Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas.

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Gallery view of the Sean Scully: Shape of Ideas exhibiton at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The works shown are Pink Blue, 1985, Oil on Linen over Panel: 32 x 24 inches, Collection of the Artist, and the four panels of Land Sea Sky, 2000, Oil on Linen, 50 x 40 inches (each). Private collection.

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Sean Scully's Between You and Me, 1988, Oil on Linen with Wood: 8 × 10 feet (243.8 × 304.8 cm), Albright Knox Art Gallery, and Vita Duplex, 1993, Oil on Linen: 8 × 10 feet (243.8 × 304.8 cm), Collection of the Artist.

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Detail of Sean Scully's Vita Duplex.

Sean Scully (American, born Ireland, 1945) Landline Pink, 2013. Oil on linen: 47 × 42 inches (119.4 × 106.7 cm). Collection of the Artist.

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Sean Scully posing in front of Landline North Blue, 2014. Oil on Aluminum: 7 feet 1 inches × 6 feet 3 inches (215.9 × 190.5 cm). Forman Family Collection.