Sean Scully is one of the most respected abstract painters working today. Born in Dublin and now 77, he has spent more than 50 years as an artist, producing a remarkable body of paintings and sculptures. He has also been nominated for the Turner Prize twice, and his work is held by leading museums and art institutions around the world. Recently, one of the most important exhibitions of his career to date, “Humility Beneath the Sky,” opened at Houghton Hall in England.
The estate was begun in the 1720s and mounts an exhibition by a major artist almost every year. It is considered one of the most beautiful estates in the world. Sean Scully, “Humility Beneath the Sky,” exhibition view, Houghton Hall, England, 2023. The artist’s small models, monumental open steel sculptures, and stacked sculptures made from sandstone, wood, glass, marble, and other materials are set against blue sky and drifting clouds, meticulously tended gardens, and historic architecture.
Indoors, a series of recent paintings and works on paper echoes Scully’s earlier work. On the eve of the opening, beneath brilliantly clear skies, the vigorous artist appeared before our camera. We spoke with him about this consequential exhibition and his “long-running” artistic career. Exterior view of Houghton Hall. Sean Scully, “Humility Beneath the Sky,” exhibition view, Houghton Hall, England, 2023. The exhibition opened at the turn of spring and summer, during the long rainy season in Norfolk, eastern England. On the day of the shoot, however, the weather was unusually fine: blue sky scattered with a few clouds.
Entering Houghton Hall, we were struck by its lush, towering trees, precisely clipped lawns and gardens, and the grand classical house at the far end of the grounds. The estate was designed by Andrea Palladio, the late-Renaissance Venetian architect, and commissioned in the 1720s by Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime minister. Sean Scully seated on one of his sculptures, “Humility Beneath the Sky,” exhibition view, Houghton Hall, England, 2023. The blue sky, clouds, trees, flowers, and strongly human atmosphere of the estate, together with sculptures scattered across the lawns, answer the exhibition’s title with unusual precision.
“The building is a monument to human vanity, and I chose this title because I wanted to emphasize the greatness of nature, and the importance of the sky and the land,” the artist said. Sean Scully, Air Wall (Crate of Air) (2018), in “Humility Beneath the Sky,” Houghton Hall, England, 2023. The lawn before the house is square, and the trees have been planted according to an exact geometry, so that the distances between neighboring trees are nearly identical.
The treetops are clipped to a level plane, making the grove resemble a line of soldiers guarding the estate. Of the works displayed outdoors, the most arresting is the large steel sculpture Air Box, positioned directly in front of the historic house.
“Air Box is like the skeleton of my abstract paintings. If you make a painting three-dimensional, make it ‘alive,’ it becomes this kind of cage, and air moves through it.” Sean Scully, “Humility Beneath the Sky,” exhibition view, Houghton Hall, England, 2023. Through the sculpture, one sees the surrounding greenery and the cream-colored house, while air seems to become a living substance moving through the rusted space of the work.
Why place Air Box in this particular location? Scully said that, having grown up in a working-class family, he wanted to set steel, the material of the working class, beside the house, a symbol of the upper class, in the starkest possible way: roughness against refinement. Sean Scully, Black and Gold (2021), in “Humility Beneath the Sky,” Houghton Hall, England, 2023. Sean Scully, Millstone Tower (2023), in “Humility Beneath the Sky,” Houghton Hall, England, 2023. Another important series, the “Coin Towers,” is made from materials including black marble, pink sandstone, and brown millstone. Some stand outdoors beneath the open sky; others are stacked indoors beside carved wooden staircases and white-quartz columns.
Sean Scully, Round Reclining Tower (2023), in “Humility Beneath the Sky,” Houghton Hall, England, 2023. The series is also tied to his childhood. He told us that his most vivid early memory was of his barber father coming home every Friday night and counting his tips. The first inspiration for these sculptures of accumulating disks was a pile of coins. Sean Scully, “Humility Beneath the Sky,” exhibition view, Houghton Hall, England, 2023. “Fifty percent of my father’s income came from tips.”
“The original impulse behind making those disk sculptures was that I wanted to repair certain things from the past. But sadly, it’s like trying to recover and repair a train that has already left the station,” Scully said. Sean Scully, Zinc Bullet (2020), in “Humility Beneath the Sky,” Houghton Hall, England, 2023. In his memory, childhood is inseparable from poverty and upheaval. The act of making therefore became an attempt to repair misfortune and pain.
On the lawn beside the house stands Zinc Bullet, a sculpture three meters high. Rusted zinc water tanks are stacked one on top of another, pierced at the center by a huge circular opening, as though an invisible bullet had passed through them. The work seems to recount an unbearable past.
“When I was four or five, my whole family lived in a slum near the Old Kent Road in London. We would often come upon bomb sites; at the time, nearly one house in every eight had been destroyed. Among the rubble lay zinc water tanks blown apart. You might even find half a fork and a shoe with a piece missing.” The artist’s memories of the Second World War remain vivid. Sean Scully, Wall of Light (2023), in “Humility Beneath the Sky,” Houghton Hall, England, 2023. This new Wall of Light was made on site at Houghton Hall from cut and stacked gray limestone.
The changing weather over the course of a day, and the shifting shadows of the trees, leave marks on the sculpture that never repeat.
“I like using local materials to make sculpture. Sometimes the work is like a pizza, topped with local materials, including limestone, millstone, and railway sleepers. They can’t be too far removed from the local environment,” the artist told us. Sean Scully, Tower (2009), in “Humility Beneath the Sky,” Houghton Hall, England, 2023. Sean Scully, Wall of Light (2023), in “Humility Beneath the Sky,” Houghton Hall, England, 2023. Wall of Light is a series he began in 1998 and has continued to the present.
The sculptural blocks, interwoven in different colors, possess a certain order alongside an unadorned, almost natural ease.
“Basically, I don’t alter the stone at all. I just cut it and stand it up—a very gentle intervention. I’m simply bringing what was underground onto the ground,” Scully said. Sean Scully, “Humility Beneath the Sky,” exhibition view, Houghton Hall, England, 2023. Moving indoors, we encountered Baroque gilt furniture, highly ornamented interiors, polished wood floors, and patterned wallpaper set against red. It felt like entering a treasury.
Remarkably, amid such sumptuous interiors, the artist’s large-color paintings and works on paper from recent years retain their force. Sean Scully, Glass Stack (2020), in “Humility Beneath the Sky,” Houghton Hall, England, 2023. Among the indoor sculptures, the most memorable was the iridescent Glass Stack. As its English title suggests, it recalls the glass of Venetian churches; when sunlight touches it, the work seems to become a flowing watercolor.
The white room containing the sculpture is also decorated with sculptures in the ancient Greek style. As the light outside the windows changes throughout the day, the work takes on different personalities.
“In the dusk, it appears especially noble; in the morning light, it looks extraordinarily seductive. It’s extremely sensitive to its environment. Yesterday evening, I couldn’t resist photographing it,” Scully said with a laugh. Sean Scully, left: Heat, 1984; right: Passionate Night, 2011. Sean Scully, Janus Wall of Light, 2017. From painting to sculpture, it is not difficult to see Scully’s sculptures as paintings that have stepped out of the frame.
The original watercolor series Wall of Light and the monumental Wall of Light sculpture outdoors form a traceable line of development. Sean Scully’s watercolor studies. The artist told us that he made the first small watercolor in the series while sitting on a beach during a trip to Mexico.
“In the early morning, you see purple and pink light, very feminine. By evening, the color of the light changes from indigo to brown, and finally to black at night. It’s extraordinary. The light in Mexico is so nuanced,” Scully said admiringly. Sean Scully, “Humility Beneath the Sky,” exhibition view, Houghton Hall, England, 2023. Sean Scully, Red Horizon, 2017. After returning from Mexico to Europe, Scully moved decisively from minimalism toward abstraction, seeking to record Mexico’s vivid colors and beautiful light.
From then on, broad horizontal bands, deep earth tones, and lively elongated blocks of color became his signature. In recent years, he has increasingly lifted the two-dimensional blocks of color from the surface of the paper and turned them into sculpture in three-dimensional space.
“My sculptures are the 3-D versions of my paintings. I can’t think of any other artist who can move so effortlessly between two and three dimensions, going back and forth,” Scully said with a smile. Sean Scully in an interview with an art publication. Unlike many academically trained artists, Scully has had an unusually eventful career. At nine, he already knew he wanted to become an artist. But to escape the slums, he first had to support himself.
As a teenager, he delivered mail, worked as a plasterer in the ballroom at Victoria Station, set type at a print shop, did graphic design, and even loaded trucks at a cardboard factory—filling them with flattened boxes, which became the source of the stacking concept in his work. It was not until he was 20 that Scully began full-time study at the Croydon College of Art in London. His artistic potential was quickly released, and he won recognition within the field—receiving two art-school scholarships and, after graduation, going on to study at Harvard University, a dream destination for countless people.
Sean Scully, Uranus on the Wall, 2022. Sean Scully painting in his studio. Before he was 30, he had his first gallery exhibition, and the work sold out. He then decided to settle in New York, beginning a career as a professional artist that has lasted more than 50 years—a prolific, high-energy “long-running” life in art. Scully was not the first major artist to mount a large exhibition at Houghton Hall. Since 2015, almost every year has brought a contemporary master to this special “exhibition space,” bringing a signature body of work to the estate.
Anish Kapoor, Sky Mirror, 2018. Tony Cragg, Ferryman, 2001. Henry Moore, Large Reclining Figure, 1984. There have also been James Turrell’s spaces, Richard Long’s circular stone slabs, Damien Hirst’s custom colored spot paintings, Anish Kapoor’s mesmerizing “sky mirror,” and Chris Levine’s “light show.”
The remarkable thing is how these works, by artists with distinct practices, are set against monumental herbaceous borders in green gardens, long rectangular fountains in the ancient Greek style, glasshouses, ancient temples, antique sculptures, and orchards and gardens of every kind. Henry Moore, Cone, 1968–1969. Damien Hirst, signature spot painting, exhibited indoors at Houghton Hall, 2018. Chris Levine, light show at Houghton Hall, 2021. One important reason these artists have agreed to participate is that Houghton Hall’s current owner, Lord Cholmondeley, is a passionate collector with strong personal views and a highly individual taste.
Lord Cholmondeley recalled: “The idea of bringing contemporary art into the estate was born in 1990, when I met the American light artist James Turrell. Later, I commissioned more works from other artists.” He said that what he most enjoys is watching artists see their work in a different setting—the look on their faces at that moment. “Their first reaction is usually, ‘My work looks better!’” Lord Cholmondeley put it.
Richard Long, Full Moon Circle, 2017. Recalling the scene that made the deepest impression on him, he said: “I will never forget the evening Richard Long completed his enormous stone-slab sculpture in the park. As he laid the final slabs, we saw the moon rise through the trees and illuminate the entire scene. He called the work Full Moon Circle.” Houghton Hall was built in the 1720s for Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime minister. Lord Cholmondeley, who now cares for the estate, is one of Walpole’s descendants.
Among the most beautiful buildings in Norfolk and one of the finest Palladian structures in England, Houghton Hall has been open to the public since its restoration in 1976. Sean Scully, “Humility Beneath the Sky,” exhibition view, Houghton Hall, England, 2023. Facing works of various sizes against the backdrop of the house, blue sky, and lawns, we returned to Scully’s title: “Humility Beneath the Sky.” Whatever human-made object one places there, the vastness of the sky and nature makes it feel humble, as though everything has returned to an earlier pastoral world.
Perhaps this is the most beautiful kind of interaction between nature and human culture. Image credits: Houghton Hall, the artist’s studio, and Thaddaeus Ropac gallery.