Abstract Painting, Art History and Politics: Sean Scully and David Carrier in Conversation

In this volume, Irish American painter Sean Scully (born 1945) meets with American philosopher and art critic David Carrier for a series of in-depth interviews on the nature of art and the artist’s relationship to his own work. An early job loading trucks at a cardboard factory inspired the stacked rectangle symbolism that would become the hallmark of his career; travels to Venice also greatly influenced his use of textured brushstrokes to evoke movement and flow even within carefully structured geometric patterns.

Carrier probes these central elements of Scully’s art along with many more questions about art history and Scully’s own position within it. The assembling of such personal insights results in a book that functions as both a collection of compelling dialogues and an autobiography of Scully. Readers are able to discover Scully’s art anew through his answers to Carrier’s incisive questions.