Sean Scully: ‘Backs and Fronts’

Untitled (Seated Figure), 1967 (Credit: Sean Scully).

“Here’s another thing that I don’t agree with,” Scully says to me – the last comment he makes in our conversations for On the Line – “and that’s when Picasso said that art is war. Art is not war. War is war. Art is the enemy of war. Art is love.”

Scully’s seated figure (above) is helpful to me in my own process of trying to interpret face and figure. In the spirit of taking issue with orotund pronouncements that could mean anything, I go one further than Mr. Scully: Art is not love. Art is art.

Here’s the painting that “changed the course of art.”

Backs and Fronts, 1981 (Credit: Sean Scully)

(Kelly Grovier, “Backs and Fronts: The painting that changed the course of art,” bbc.com, 9-28-21)

(c) 2021 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

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About JMN

I live in Texas and devote much of my time to easel painting on an amateur basis. I stream a lot of music, mostly jazz, throughout the day. I like to read and memorize poetry.
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