Irregular Linear Forms

About

Here the underlying structure is rectilinear but the execution is not mechanical. Stripes drift, rectangles lean, and edges fray or bleed. The result keeps the order of geometry while admitting the pressure and hesitation of the hand.

Sean Scully has built paintings since the 1980s from broad stripes and blocks laid down with loaded brushes and no masking tape, so every band shows its making. Ben Nicholson scored and scraped lines into his painted reliefs, giving ruled-looking forms a handmade softness. Earlier precedents include Paul Klee's watercolour 'magic squares' of the 1920s, with their softly uneven cells, and the feathered, uncertain borders of Mark Rothko's rectangles in the 1950s. Look for the slight curve in a line meant to be straight and for brushmarks gathering at the edges of blocks.