Lot Essay
In Two One One, the essentials of Scully's work have come to the fore. Like a Renaissance triptych, the painting is composed of three distinct vertical blocks of equal dimensions which imbue the picture with a permanence, monumentality and reverence. The colours of the bands on the left and right of the work bring light into it, but it is the central band of a rich dark sea-blue intersected with bands of relentless black which give the work such stability.
In his inclusion of three distinct blocks, Scully deliberately introduces an element which could potentially disrupt the unity of the painting. The onlooker is initially made to concentrate on one of the work's three parts, rather than the painting as a solid whole. This is reinforced by each section having been intersected in turn by horizontal bands of differing colours and sizes. However, it is through the presence of a disrupting factor that the unity of the work is heightened, emerging triumphant from invading elements.
This introduction of oppositions and the heightening of a polarity between them is a theme which is constantly returned to in this painting. It is seen in the way in which the richness of the painted colour is proceeded by a film of glittering oil paint, which has been applied with a spontaneity and a roughness of touch, so that the angle of each stroke of the brush is delineated and emphasised. This produces a movement of undulating forms which seem to step away from the canvas, dancing in an impossible glittering film in front of the stationary eternal stillness of the geometry behind.
Again the strict geometry and perfection of the composition is opposed by the deliberate mishandling of the paint. The colour in the bands sometimes oversteps its mark and invades the next band of a differing tone; because of this the edges between the bands are sometimes blurred, but this does not ever result in a definitve uncertainty over band demarcations. There are also areas of the work, such as the white stripes in the left block, and the yellow bands of the right block, where the paint has been thinned, so that the slightly darker tone of the colour underneath it is introduced.
Ironically, it is the contrast between the coldness of the composition and the humaneness of its execution that creates the essential tension within the painting.
In his inclusion of three distinct blocks, Scully deliberately introduces an element which could potentially disrupt the unity of the painting. The onlooker is initially made to concentrate on one of the work's three parts, rather than the painting as a solid whole. This is reinforced by each section having been intersected in turn by horizontal bands of differing colours and sizes. However, it is through the presence of a disrupting factor that the unity of the work is heightened, emerging triumphant from invading elements.
This introduction of oppositions and the heightening of a polarity between them is a theme which is constantly returned to in this painting. It is seen in the way in which the richness of the painted colour is proceeded by a film of glittering oil paint, which has been applied with a spontaneity and a roughness of touch, so that the angle of each stroke of the brush is delineated and emphasised. This produces a movement of undulating forms which seem to step away from the canvas, dancing in an impossible glittering film in front of the stationary eternal stillness of the geometry behind.
Again the strict geometry and perfection of the composition is opposed by the deliberate mishandling of the paint. The colour in the bands sometimes oversteps its mark and invades the next band of a differing tone; because of this the edges between the bands are sometimes blurred, but this does not ever result in a definitve uncertainty over band demarcations. There are also areas of the work, such as the white stripes in the left block, and the yellow bands of the right block, where the paint has been thinned, so that the slightly darker tone of the colour underneath it is introduced.
Ironically, it is the contrast between the coldness of the composition and the humaneness of its execution that creates the essential tension within the painting.