RO b e r t C . S c u l l a n d M i c h a e l H e i z e r Robert and Ethel Scull were the quintessential collectors of Pop Art, and although others built important collections, no one acquired Pop with the determination and sheer abandon of Robert C. Scull. Known as “Bob and Spike,” the Sculls personified the adventurous, rule-breaking, drug-laced spirit of the 1960s. She was the fashion plate; he was the taxi baron with an insatiable taste for art. As the Pop couple, they were much photographed and commissioned portraits from everyone. George Segal cast them in plaster; in his 1963 Portrait of the Scull Family. James Rosenquist depicted the family as a reflection on the side of a New York taxi; and Ethel Scull 36 Times, 1963, was Andy Warhol’s first commissioned portrait. Pop Art was not Bob Scull’s first or last collection; earlier he had assembled a group of Abstract Expressionist paintings that were as impressive as the Pop works for which he is remembered. His later role as a patron of Conceptual art and Earth art was of crucial importance to Walter De Maria and Michael Heizer, and to this day remains largely unknown. It was Scull who suggested to De Maria that he work in metal and provided the financial backing for the sculptures he made from 1965 to 1967, among them, Cage II, now in the Museum of Modern
Archives of Americ an Art Journ al 50: 1–2
63
Opposite: Robert Scull at Michael Heizer’s Dissipate, 1968. Photograph courtesy of Janet Sirmon Fine Art and the Yale Joel estate. Above: Aerial shot of Michael Heizer’s #1 of Nine Nevada Depressions, 1968. Photograph courtesy of Janet Sirmon Fine Art and the Yale Joel estate.
Judith Goldman