Sean Scully's 'Black Square' by David Carrier - Hyperallergic
7 April 2020
Sean Scully's 'Black Square' 2020 is the subject of investigation for David Carrier in Hyperallergic. The article explores connections to Josef Albers's Homage to the Square; Kazimir Malevich's infamous Black Square (1915) and Henri Matisse’s famously enigmatic French-Window at Collioure (1914), with a window apparently opening onto a pit-black night.
“Black Square” is an appropriate response to springtime 2020 because it offers abstractly a deeply felt response to our present ways of living. In discussing some of my responses — some perhaps oddly subjective, a few guided by his suggestions — I do not mean to cut off other ways of thinking. The essential generosity of Scully’s art lies, so I believe, in its openness.
And like his best works, “Black Square” is oddly exhilarating even though (or, especially because) it is initially grim. A successful artist, it has been said, is someone who makes other people also creative. You need to learn to trust the ways Scully sets your mind in motion."
Sean Scully, Black Square, 2020, Oil on aluminum, 85 x 75 inches, 215 x 190.5cm
© Sean Scully
