With him, the view of black has changed. Pierre Soulages has elevated his “Outrenoir” to the rank of art. Since then, it is no longer us who look at black, but it is black that looks at us. The most highly rated French painter in the world died at the age of 102, we learned this Wednesday, October 26, a few months before his 103rd birthday, December 24, 2022.
Being in front of him was even more impressive than being in front of one of his giant canvases. Pierre Soulages, beyond the world famous painter, was a 1.90m tall man, always dressed in black, endowed with a mischievous smile and with curious eyes. At the very end of his artistic career, which lasted more than seventy years, a crisis of osteoarthritis bothered him a little, but did not prevent him from continuing to paint his works on the floor.
Revolution / Continuity?
So, until the end, he stayed true to himself and worked on his paintings in his black and white studio in Sète, in the south of France. Did he feel he had revolutionized painting? ” Some say that I revolutionized painting, but I never thought like that: revolution/continuity… I do what I believe I have to do, which fully corresponds to me. And if that opposes the rest. It’s like that. »
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In 2019, Pierre Soulages accepted the festivities around its centenary, but he didn’t like to celebrate his birthday. He preferred to prepare for the future: I always think about what I’m going to do tomorrow. And if I have any advice for people who want to age as much as I do, it’s to always be active. “.
The “Outrenoir”
At the heart of his art, the “Outrenoir”, which today brings together more than 1,700 paintings. ” “Outrenoir” is a word that I invented. One of my exhibitions was called “Black light”. It’s just [comme titre], but “Black light” is an optical definition. It is light reflected by black surface states. But what matters is what we feel, what is achieved in us. It is the mental field which is not the same as that of the simple black. I chose this word “Outrenoir” in the image of across the Channel or across the Rhine. Outre-Manche means another country. And “Outrenoir” also designates another “country” than that of simple black, since black is no longer black there, basically. Black is only there to reflect, transform, transmute the light it receives. »
His passion for black was born very early, he confided to us during the major retrospective at the Center Pompidou in 2009: “ I was a shy child. I traced with my brush that I had dipped in the inkwell, which disappointed the adults who offered me colors. They found it surprising that I preferred to dip my brush in the black inkwell. I was drawing lines in black ink when someone said to me: “What are you doing there, my little Pierre?” I would then reply: “Snow”. It caused such a laugh that they remembered. »
” I work with light »
Behind the anecdote of childhood hides the absence of the father, who died when he was five years old, but in the meantime also appeared the future model of his painting: to shine and sculpt the light and the other colors with the help from black. Because, for Soulages, “ matter is light. I don’t work with black. I work with light. There is nothing richer than light. It’s much richer than the colors. I don’t do monochromes. It is the opposite of monochrome. »
For him, the color black represented not a rupture, but the continuity of the history of art, and the categorical refusal of all light: ” The black color is the only color marked by the absence of other lights. White is the meeting of all the lights, but black is total absence. However, I am amused to note that, 340 centuries ago, in the Chauvet cave, 160, 180 centuries ago, in the Lascaux cave, men were painting. They kept painting with black in the darkest places. They descended into the total darkness of the caves to paint with black. It’s upsetting. While there was chalk everywhere, a white stone that marks… »
“You are in the space of painting”
Pierre Encrevé, one of the best specialists in the work of Pierre Soulages, defines his work as a ” monopigment paint with chromatic versatility “. In other words, it can reflect all the light it receives. Knowing that quantity changes quality, which explains the formats up to 5 meters wide. ” Gauguin said: “A kilo of green is greener than a hundred grams of the same green. Sometimes I need or want large areas of black rather than small ones. I don’t express and I don’t feel the same with that. »
But the most radical change caused by the art of Soulages concerns space and the relationship to time and therefore also the position of the viewer vis-à-vis the canvas. “ There was illusionist painting, that of the Quattrocento, that which created space in depth. At this time, the space is behind the wall. It’s the “hole” in the wall. What I do is the reverse. Space is ahead. What you are looking at is not darkness, it is light coming from the painting towards you. Accordingly, space is ahead. You who look, you are in the space of painting. »
11 million dollars for a Soulages
Which also explains another phenomenon: if you step aside, you no longer have the same canvas in front of you. ” You see the canvas in the very instant of your gaze. His presence – and the word “presence” is important in art, it’s even the most important – his presence takes place in the moment of the gaze. It is also a new and different relationship to the new time. »
In the meantime, interest in the man who celebrated his first retrospective in 1967 at the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, continues to grow. Already in 1986, a postage stamp displayed a painting by Soulages. In 1992, he was awarded the “Nobel Prize” for the arts, the Praemium Imperiale, category “Painting”. And he was the only living artist whose work hung in the prestigious Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. In 2013, a “blue” work, his Painting November 21, 1959, sold for 5.1 million euros at Sotheby’s in London.
Four years later, a “black” work associated with a luminous blue, Peinture 14 avril 1962, raised the auction to 6.1 million euros at Sotheby’s in Paris. And on November 15, 2018, Soulages succeeds as the first French artist to exceed the ten million dollar mark (11 million dollars, or 9.6 million euros) during a sale in New York for his Painting December 23, 1959 And in November 2020, Soulages was decorated with the Order of the Rising Sun, one of the highest honors in Japan.
” Someone else did it »
Today, a hundred museums around the world exhibit his paintings. But the largest collection of his works is currently at the Soulages Museum in Rodez. Even during his lifetime, the artist had bequeathed to his hometown, in Aveyron, more than 500 works. After the Soulages Century festivities, the Soulages museum, open since 2014, should soon cross the threshold of one million visitors. We can admire both the works before the “Outrenoir” era and the walnut stains from the 1940s, of which the master of black always underlined: “ Everything comes from there. I still love him, but when I see what I did back then, I know that’s me. But, in reality, it was someone else who did that. I was the other. »
As for the infinite variety of shades of black by Pierre Soulages, it will also continue to grow after the artist’s death. The mystery surrounding his way of thinking about light from black and the space of painting will remain intact.
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