Sean Scully: By Hand
Sean Scully argues that current environmental and public-health crises are related to our increasing disconnection from the physical and man-made world.
Artist Sean Scully argues that current environmental and public-health crises are directly related to our increasing disconnection from the physical and man-made world. In art, physical mark-making, whether the drawn line or sweeping brushstroke, expresses both human frailty and passion. In this talk, Scully connects these two sentiments by contending that the “dry, linear thinking” behind conceptual art has detached the natural world from the world of art—which is why that aesthetic has fallen out of favor. Likewise in the world of human industry and praxis: If humans forget they are physical beings who are a part of nature and cannot proceed by rationality alone, they will be cast adrift from an ecosystem of which they are an integral part.
Moderated by Prof. Dr. Dorothea von Hantelmann, Professor of Art and Society, Bard College Berlin.
Meet the speaker
Sean Scully is an Irish-born American-based artist whose work has been exhibited and collected in major art museums and institutions throughout the world. He is also a lecturer and has taught as a professor at a number of universities. Over the course of his fifty-year career, Scully has created an influential body of work—paintings,…
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