Sean Scully – Heart of Darkness 1

Description

Sean Scully, Heart of Darkness 1, is an Etching, Aquatint, Sugarlift, and Spitbite Print on Magnani Paper made in 1992. Image Size is 12.5 x 10.25 inches. It is signed, dated, and annotated “BAT” meaning “Bon a Tirer,” French for ‘Good to Print.’  This print is from Scully’s Heart of Darkness portfolio of eight etchings created exclusively for the classic novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Sean Scully’s characteristic stripe paintings have a rugged, inelegant beauty and an intensely physical, almost sculptural, presence. He works on a large scale with colors that cannot be easily characterized, allowing strong underpainting to merge with the surfaces of his works. The wavering edges of his lushly painted bands structure imperfect compositions. The Heart of Darkness series, refers to the novella first published in 1899 by Polish-born British author Joseph Conrad (1857–1924). Reflecting on the story, which depicts colonial exploitation in the Belgian Congo, Scully said, “Conrad writes that the heart of the twentieth century is black.”

In 1890, Joseph Conrad shipped out from Brussels to the Congo, to rescue a Monsieur Klein, ailing agent of a Belgian trading company dealing in ivory. In Heart of Darkness, it is Marlow who ships out from Brussels and sails up the Congo to rescue Mr. Kurtz. Kurtz had come with the noble aim of enlightening the natives. Instead, they envelope him in darkness. As Conrad startles the reader out of complacency, so does Sean Scully with his etchings. Born in Ireland, Scully is one of the world’s most renowned artists. His works are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.