Mexico HUA HUA 1983

Sean Scully made this watercolor, Mexico HUA HUA, in 1983. The composition is built from blocky shapes painted in red, white and blue, an echo of a flag. The watercolor is washed across the surface, the red bleeding into the white, the blue dense with pigment. The lines wobble and shift, everything is a little off-kilter, the edges are irregular and uneven. It's interesting that the brushstrokes are so visible. You can see exactly how the color was applied, layer by layer. There's something about the way that these stripes repeat, almost like the song of a flag, but it’s been hummed instead of sung, if you know what I mean? Scully is definitely in conversation with Agnes Martin’s minimalist grids, but he’s roughed things up, made them looser, more human, less machine.