Sean Scully’s work of the early 1980s marks a critical rupture in the timeline of modern abstraction. With the Lisson Gallery’s ambitious exhibition featuring pivotal works from this period, viewers are thrust into the tectonic shifts of a painter who redefined his practice by slicing through the orthodoxy of minimalism. These paintings are not just images—they are objects, spaces, and architectures of feeling forged in the dusty lofts of an unpolished Tribeca.
Backs and Fronts (1981) is at the heart of the show, an 11-panel titan last exhibited at MoMA PS1 over four decades ago. Stitched together with reclaimed wooden struts and rooted in Scully’s engagement with Picasso’s Three Musicians, the work reverberates with raw, physical immediacy. It is not polite; it doesn’t merely hang on the wall. It asserts itself, staking a claim as both a historical artifact and a forward-looking manifesto. Here, Scully breaks free of his previous tightly controlled stripes, loosening his grip on masking tape and embracing a messier, more architectural sensibility.
Then there is Adoration (1982), a totemic assembly of nine stacked and conjoined panels. If Backs and Fronts was a declaration of war on the flat canvas, Adoration is its full-bodied liberation. With echoes of the Old Masters’ Adoration of the Magi, the work teeters between reverence and rebellion. It invokes the sacred while defiantly modernizing it, pushing past the staid confines of pictorial space and introducing elements of sculptural relief.
The exhibition moves forward into Blame (1983), a work that edges towards outright three-dimensionality. With its dark protrusions hovering precariously above a base of pastel-striped panels, the painting feels like a precipice. It anticipates the restlessness of postmodernism while remaining firmly rooted in the tactile world of paint and canvas.
Scully’s 1980s period was both praised and misunderstood. Critics hailed its ambition and scale but often overlooked its daring redefinition of painterly language. This exhibition highlights his pioneering use of inset canvases, his experiments with panel height, and his playful rethinking of stripes—no longer the rigid markers of minimalism but instead fluid gestures that shimmer and shift.
What’s remarkable is how fresh these works feel today. In an age where painting often plays second fiddle to installation or new media, Scully’s canvases remind us of the sheer physicality and presence of paint. These are not just paintings; they are sites of action, layered with history and brimming with restless energy.
The exhibition is complemented by Broadway Shuffle, a trail of Scully’s outdoor sculptures. Though less intimately charged than his canvases, these public works extend his formal concerns into urban space, inviting passersby to engage with abstraction outside the confines of the gallery.
Scully’s achievement in this period was to make abstract painting stand up for itself—literally and figuratively. The Lisson Gallery’s meticulous presentation captures the vigor and ferocity of an artist who, at his peak, was unafraid to dismantle the status quo and reassemble it in his own image.
Sean Scully: Duane Street, 1981-1983
Lisson Gallery, NYC
New York, 29 October 2024 – 1 February 2025
