The Brooklyn Rail

Positioned among the mountains of Hong Kong, the exhibition Celestial Mechanics: Form and Future in the Work of Gerhard Richter and Sean Scully, organized by Ben Brown Fine Arts at the Asia Society Center during Hong Kong Basel and curated by Joachim Pissarro, presents a compelling juxtaposition of two titans of abstract art. At first glance, Gerhard Richter and Sean Scully share little beyond their European origins and proximate generations: Richter was born in 1932 in Dresden, Germany, while Scully was born in 1945 in Dublin, Ireland. However, this surprising show reveals deep, albeit subtle, resonances that stretch beyond chronology. Through Richter’s introspective abstractions and Scully’s emotive geometries, the exhibition maps shared thematic explorations of human struggle, resilience and memory.

Gerhard Richter’s and Sean Scully’s oeuvres emerged from the remnants of post-World War II Europe and the original avant-garde movements whose modes of expression were grounded in overly enthusiastic utopian visions. Amongst the post-war abstractionists, there seemed to be a consensus about the need to renounce both the rationality of Constructivism and de Stijl and the irrationality of Surrealism. Against the backdrop of Europe’s reconstruction culture of the 1950s, the traditions of symbolism and representation and their communicative functions seemed void of their moral appeal, emptied of purpose, and thus rendered obsolete. The founding paradigms of non-objectivity were relics of a different era; for abstraction to remain relevant, it had to reinvent its conceptual direction. In pursuit of a universal language of truth, and aligned with the new liberal and human rights value system of the post-1949 Geneva Convention order, the abstraction underwent a schism. On one end of the spectrum, it evolved through a monastic rejection of gesturality achieved by a rigorous artifice of total reductions enabling monochrome planarity. The other side was claimed by a new iteration of gestural abstraction spearheaded by Jackson Pollock that sought access to what Carl Jung described as the “collective unconscious”—a set of shared memories and instincts that underlie human experience. Richter and Scully adeptly navigate this new dialectic of abstraction and its pictorial dualism, each striving for a unity that defines their distinct artistic expressions.

Celestial Mechanics presents rare examples of Scully’s and Richter’s odes to Minimalism, a fleeting love triangle with the movement that both artists quickly renounced due to what they perceived were the unsatisfying levels of its human dimension. Scully’s Red Black (1978), a dark gray painting with red undertones and textural nuances perceptible upon close inspection, dialogues with Richter’s Ohne Titel [Untitled] (1970) and Sternbild (Constellation) (1969), a star-like composition that recalls the cosmic body of work of photographer Thomas Ruff made decades later. Meanwhile, Scully’s work echoes Kazimir Malevich’s geometry and reflects his engagement with the prevailing currents of Minimalist thought he discovered upon his arrival in the United States in 1975. Ohne Titel (1970) is a striking example of Richter’s “Grey Paintings” series from the 1970s, corresponding to his decision to reduce his colour palette exclusively to gray. In a letter to Edy de Wilde from February 23, 1975, Richter explains his choice of remaining loyal to one color: “It makes no statement whatever, it evokes neither feelings nor associations, it is neither visible nor invisible … it has the capacity that no other colour has to make nothing ‘visible’.” This statement reveals an undertone of nihilism, possibly alluding to the impassivity and silence that defined anti-aesthetic models of the twentieth century that found expression in Duchamp’s readymades or John Cage’s 4’33”. Considering that in 2006, Richter produced a group of six large paintings named after Cage, executed in his signature squeegee technique, it is reasonable to assert that Richter’s canvases expressed the post-war’s culture of aesthetic refusal to confront grief, devastation, and the reluctance to acknowledge his country’s Nazi past. In his effort to portray nothingness through the toneless world of his gray monochromes, Richter communicates the silence.

Both artists soon recognised Minimalism’s aesthetic exhaustion, which prompted them to reorient their abstraction strategies. Scully aimed to evacuate the impersonal from minimalist compositions, reinfusing them with emotion through the re-materialization of the subject. His ambition to “humanise abstract painting so it does not destroy us”¹ is realised through the physical engagement of dynamic gestures and the rough handling of the paint. Scully further elaborates on how he achieves this effect: “I am investing my hand, my body, myself.”² Scully’s execution, as demonstrated in the exhibition, is chaotic, childlike, and disordered. Yet it is precisely through this disarray that he generates pulsating tension and friction. His grid’s stripes evoke veins swollen with colourful blood, on the verge of bursting. A return to an emotionally enriched Pollockian gesturalism is manifest in three different works: Wall Yellows Pink (2023), Untitled (Landline) (2022), and Landline Blue Gray Red (2023). In these pieces, paint visibly drips from the stripes down the canvas, with the effect more pronounced in some than others. Scully’s paintings become the antithesis of order and spruceness and the aesthetic code of Minimalism, challenging its fascination with what is purely optical, while at the same time staying loyal to formal reductionism. A closer inspection reveals the intricate complexity of the compositional order. The brilliance of Scully’s work is in the irreconcilable paradoxes it embodies: the canvases are static yet spirited, rigid yet fluid, timeless yet fleeting, anchored in principles of American Abstract Expressionism yet distinctly contemporary.

Meanwhile, Richter suffered from the self-imposed pictorial limitations presented by his gray palette despite his professed fascination with “the difference between all the many greys, the fact that some are better than others.”³ Whereas the exhibition reminds the audience of Scully’s limited visual repertoire that began in 1981, it also showcases the extensive diversity of Richter’s oeuvre, affirming his unique breadth among the abstractionists of his era. Scully reflected on the trans-Atlantic differences in visual culture: “America is so different from Germany—Germany is very allowing … people are not expected to have a signature style.”⁴ Indeed, it is difficult to argue that Richter has had a signature style; rather, in an artistic production that spans over seven decades, he has developed many. During the early 1980s, Richter began bifurcating his style, oscillating between figuration and abstraction, as well as between conceptual and political art. His painting Ausschnitt (Grün-Grau) [Detail (Green-Gray] (1970), straddles these two styles. Richter’s inability to commit to one visual language is probably caused by his conviction—a notion Scully finds inherently objectionable⁵—that the distinction between abstraction and figuration is artificial, asserting, “the differences are superficial, and that’s unimportant.”⁶ Placed opposite Scully’s Red Light (1999), Richter’s work starkly contrasts with Scully’s in terms of paint application methodologies. Richter’s piece epitomises sterility and calmness, characterised by surgically perfected details and a profound understanding of the medium, evoking the gentle movements of a lake. In contrast, Scully’s tense visual relationship with his uneven geometric forms draws and ejects viewers from the canvas through their seemingly nonchalant execution.

However, more palpable similarities can be detected in Richter’s later works, specifically in his abstract paintings created using his distinctive squeegee technique, which now represents two-thirds of his output. While Scully eventually softened and muted his colour palette, as eloquently exemplified by the spectacular Wall of Light Red (1998), Richter embraced resonant primary colours, apparent in the compelling Abstraktes Bild (1991), Grün-Blau-Rot (1993), and Abstraktes Bild (2001). Both artists share a similar approach in allowing the composition to evolve organically without meticulous pre-planning as they begin to layer the paint patiently in the early stages of the creative process. However, their methods soon diverge: where Scully continues to add, Richter begins to remove. As such, they start to work in opposite directions, with the former concealing and the latter revealing previously laid, dense paint coatings. Had the two artists ever worked on the same canvas, it would likely have never been completed.

Despite the contrasting dynamics in their creative processes—Richter’s subtractive method and Scully’s additive approach—their work converges in challenging traditional definitions of abstraction. This sets the stage for a deeper exploration of how both artists, through their distinctive methodologies, question and expand the boundaries of abstract art. Interestingly, if we define abstraction as imagery abstracted from reality, neither artist fits neatly into the abstractionist label, an observation further reinforced by Richter’s and Scully’s ambivalent approach towards such categorisation. The two artists vehemently oppose the formalist approach to abstract art, deftly conveyed by Frank Stella’s maxim “What you see is what you see.” Contrasting with this viewpoint, Scully articulates his mission to democratise abstract art, stating, “I want to return abstraction to the people.”⁷ He achieves this connection by anchoring his non-representational canvases in the tangible realities of urban environments, particularly the architectural structures that define city landscapes. By doing so, he distances his work from pure rationalism, which divorces the aesthetic experience from the multifaceted dimensions of human experience. His abstract paintings, rich in allegory, reflect the rhythmic patterns and architectural repetitions of urban life.

Consequently, Scully’s work is rooted in a figurative tradition, interpreting the world through a visual language that simplifies forms, creates repetitive motifs, and employs semiotic signs and patterns derived from physical reality yet transformed by his brushwork. Similarly, Richter’s approach to abstraction reflects his belief that artworks should be “constructed like a piece of nature.”⁸ He posits that viewers instinctively seek out recognizable shapes within abstract images, a concept that plays out in his “Blow-Up” technique, developed in the 1960s. Described by art historian Camille Morineau, this method involves magnifying a photographic motif until it loses its recognisable features, though its origins in tangible objects keep it figuratively grounded. Richter himself notes, “All the abstract paintings show scenarios, surroundings, or landscapes that don’t exist, but they create the impression that they could exist.”⁹ This approach echoes Scully’s treatment of urban environments, where familiar elements are abstractly enlarged to the point of universality. Using the term coined by Morineau for Richter’s approach, we might also describe Scully’s architectural forms as being “blown-up.”

Asked about the main similarities between his own work and that of Gerhard Richter, Sean Scully remarked, "I think we both have strong intellects, but that’s where it ends." Indeed, both artists, as rare humanists with deep respect for tradition, have thoroughly engaged with art history and its related fields to shape new directions in art. Visually, aside from brief experiments with Minimalism, their approaches largely digress. Celestial Mechanics skilfully illustrates how the intellect Scully mentions, moulded by the shared experiences of post-WWII Europe, underpins both artists' work with similar ideological perspectives on the purpose of art. Despite these mutual influences, they have produced distinct artistic outputs, each pulling in different directions but aimed toward the same transformative goal of returning emotions, narrative, and poetry to non-representational painting. Together, Richter and Scully have propelled abstract art into the twenty-first century, showcasing its continued evolution and relevance both for now and into the future.

1. Sean Scully, interview with Natalia Gierowska, 15 April 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Gerhard Richter and Nicholas Serota, “I Have Nothing to Say: Nicholas Serota and Gerhard Richter,” in Mark Godfrey and Nicholas Serota with Dorothee Brill and Camille Morineau (eds.), Gerhard Richter, Panorama (London: Tate Publishing, 2011).
4. Sean Scully and David Carrier, “Scully Finds Himself In New York,” in Sean Scully and David Carrier in Conversation. Abstract Painting, Art History, and Politics (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2021).
5. Asked to comment on Richter’s quote, Scully explained: “I love figuration because it explains and describes, but it also gets on my nerves. Somehow abstraction is free of this, it doesn’t have to know what things are, which is the illness of the world.” Scully, interview with Natalia Gierowska.
6. Gerhard Richter, interview with Rolf Gunter, 1978, in Dietmar Elger and Hans Ulrich Obrist (eds.), Gerhard Richter: Text: Writings, Interviews and Letters 1961 - 2007 (London: Thames & Hudson, 2009).
7. Sean Scully, interview with Natalia Gierowska.
8. Gerhard Richter and Nicholas Serota, “I Have Nothing to Say: Nicholas Serota and Gerhard Richter.”
9. Ibid.