The National CollegePainting and its Reception
Light Out of Darkness: The Black Paintings of Pierre Soulages
Adrienne Lord
The definition of black in the Oxford English Dictionary is as follows: 'Black; The proper word for a certain quality practically classed among colours, but consisting optically in the total absence of colour due to the absence or total absorption of light as its opposite white arises from the reflection of all the rays of light' (Oxford English Dictionary, p. 889). Colour as a thing in itself, as a certain wavelength is without much meaning. When one considers that everyone perceives colour in a similar way, nonetheless culturally everyone is different and how they respond to colour intellectually can vary greatly. This is how universal qualities of a colour become apparent.
Black has strong symbolic meanings and associations particularly with death in the Western World. It represents night and darkness. Black does not reflect, but absorbs all light. That is its essential nature, while that of white is to reflect light (Terenzio, p. 94). The colour black is full of contradictions. Even this simple statement is debatable. Is black a colour? Is black a hueless colour sensation of low brightness (A Dictionary of Colour, p. 10-11)? When the three primary colours are mixed one arrives at black. Is black therefore all colours? To use black in painting is difficult. It may not necessarily or directly symbolise things or ideas such as death, shadow or melancholy specifically. But it does carry with it into every new context the history of its meanings, a litany of associations by which it is eternally complicated.
The French artist Pierre Soulages has consistently and pre-eminently used black in his work. He began to paint after the Second World War, when along with the phenomenon of the appearance of large-scale abstract paintings both in America and Europe, came the widespread creation of pictures using a palette of only black and white. Post war malaise and the social and economic climate of the time caused a shift of the cultural centre from Paris to New York. Therefore, young artists like Soulages, who remained in Paris, had to struggle to gain recognition. At the time his black paintings stood out in strong contrast to the colourful work being done by his contemporaries in France. For him, black always remained the basis of his palette. In an interview with Charles Juliet he said 'black is a violent colour, it imposes itself, it dominates, it is the original colour' (Soulages 1986, p. 8).1 But even more important than colour for Soulages is light. His paintings are predominantly black but at all times, they have a wonderful brilliance and light. Soulages stated: 'What matters in a canvas is the light and the space to which it gives rise and from which it should not be separated' (Soulages 1980, p. 83).
Pierre Soulages was born at Rodez, in the Rouergue, on 24th December 1919. Early influences on his work stem from his interest in Gaulish or Celtic stone carvings. In Pre-Roman times, Rodez was a Celtic centre and its museum, Museé Fenaille, has a large collection of stone carvings from that time. There is an apparent kinship of design between them and Pierre Soulages' paintings.
On a visit to the Romanesque abbey Church at Sainte-Foy de Conques near Rodez, with James Johnson Sweeney, Soulages said 'You know it was here at this spot, that I decided to be a painter – not an architect, a painter' (Soulages in Sweeney 1972, p. 10). In Soulages' handling of paint there is something which recalls the warm darkness of the interior of Sainte-Foy. For the blackness in the abbey is brought to life by the subtle illumination generated by the slashes of light coming from the narrow slit windows and their reflection where they strike the floor and walls. This is an indirect light source, secret and intriguing, which Soulages set out to discover in his work.
In 1938 Pierre Soulages went to Paris to study art. He entered the studio of René Jaudon, who advised him to prepare for the Prix de Rome. He was admitted to the Ecole de Beaux Arts. However, at that time there were exhibitions of Cézanne and Picasso on view in Paris, which caused him to reject what was being taught in this school and he returned to Rodez (Juin 1960, p. 63). In 1942, Soulages moved to Courbevoie outside Paris, where, after the war, he began his painting career. 'No money, no canvas; I set about painting on old sheets, or working on paper principally in charcoal' (Soulages in Sweeney p. 21). By 1947 he began to use large black signs on a light ground. The brush strokes were becoming larger and evolved into signs, which could be read at a single glance. He said that his 'concerns in 1947 were [...] independence, freedom, which I wanted to look at through simultaneity' (Soulages in Juliet 1986, p. 21). He refused the spectator the facility of the path; the eye embraces the sign in a single moment, in its totality. Time was static in those signs. 'Movement was no longer described; it becomes tension, movement under control, that is to say dynamism' (Sweeney, p. 22).
Soulages' work from around this time has been compared to the art of calligraphy of Eastern Asia, as this employs similar techniques regarding the recording of the hand's gesture on the canvas. For Soulages that is where the comparison ends. When Soulages speaks about his work, he constantly refers to the pigments and the tools he uses, which, in most cases, he makes himself (Ragon 1996, p. 97). In his early paintings he used acrylic paint and walnut stains, both more fluid than oil paint. According to Soulages, they 'permit long drawn out brushstrokes and an easy sliding of the tool that gives the picture a spontaneous look' (Soulages in Ceysson 1980, p.90). They also allowed him to exploit all the physical qualities of the colour black, its transparency, opaqueness, brilliance, dullness, texture and form.
Soulages' work has always been predominately black. However, it containes a consistent and significant portrayal of light. The light in this early work was characterised by a strong chiaroscuro (fig. 1). For Soulages this is defined as 'giving light to dark shades' (Soulages in Ceysson, p. 82). The contrast of dark and light areas in his compositions was more dramatic and less fluid than they are in his canvases of the late sixties. When referring to paintings featuring black on a light ground, Soulages says 'some of the light coloured areas seemed lighter – because of the contrasting black – even though the actual colour never changes' (Soulages in Peppiatt 1980, p. 160). In his work, Soulages has used a limited palette with black as always the predominant colour. When speaking about this economy of means, he says 'When one likes something passionately, the rest is excluded from consideration naturally [...] the more the means are limited the stronger the expression' (Soulages in Sweeney p. 13).
Not all of Soulages' Black Paintings are exclusively black, some are highlighted by traces of gentian blue or mushroom brown as well as being broken by expanses of white. These colours are used alone with black – never in complementary harmonies, and they generally come from behind the black that covers them. The colours acquire their brightness from the black next to them. His work from the late sixties is subtler. He composes tone with tone ranging from deep black to pale grey and from a thick impasto to an almost invisible wash. Whereas in his earlier work, the black forms stand out in strong contrast against a light ground, the black now covers the colour. It is described by Soulages as a 'Black through which colour comes, a colour covered then bare, which rises from the canvas and which the black excites' (Soulages in Juliet, p. 9).
Figure 1: Painting, 230 x 162cm,
21 June 1971.In Soulages 82 Peintures, p. 77. Courtesy the artist
The choice of black as an absolute colour became apparent in Soulages' work after his exhibition at the George Pompidou Centre in Paris in 1979 (Ragon, p. 97). These canvases were black all over, yet they were intensely luminous. He described how the work developed, how he had been creating several paintings, which were black on dark grey, and as he worked, he noticed he was giving it different values by means of traces. Therefore, he decided to go a stage further and painted with nothing but the same 'black' paint. The result was quite different, because it was the substance, the texture – by means of contrasting reliefs and the brush strokes – which gave this single black colour its tonal values (Peppiatt, p. 158). He used oil paint in these paintings, because it kept the exact trace of the brush and set just like cement, keeping all traces absolutely intact. Some of the paintings have been done with house painters' brushes, which have been altered by pruning them so that he could get the degree of suppleness or roughness that he needed. In some he has used wide palette knives to smooth the surface.
His yardstick in these paintings was not texture but light (ibid., p. 160). You do not find a black next to a grey, but the same black throughout; but those areas, which carry the brush mark, react to the light differently. The physical properties of the light that is in play are not those, which one usually finds in painting. Here it is the texture of the surface, rigid or smooth, that changes the light and leads to different values. According to Soulages 'The mingled shadows and reflections that cling to the countless grooves left behind by the brush create a light which has an everchanging quality, and a colour of its own different from that of the pigment' (Soulages in Ceysson, p. 90, f.). In contrast, the surfaces flattened out by the spatula to become smooth, bring about colour and light that are very different. 'It is the texture of the surface and the manner in which the light breaks up that creates the colour' (ibid., p. 91).
Black is, optically speaking, the colour that reflects the least light; but when it catches the light on a thousand tiny ridges one gets the impression of colour going from dark grey to quite light grey. In Soulages' words 'the light comes out of the black paint itself and it vibrates and changes as you look at it and see forms emerge and disappear' (Peppiatt, p. 160). The densest black paintings are so heavily textured with glossy black and so carefully designed that contrasts are clearly visible as the light changes or the viewer moves around them (Whyte, p. 364). Anyone viewing these paintings and walking past one of them sees it come into being, sees it build up and transform with the light. Soulages believes 'the reality of the work is a triple relationship between the thing, the painter who has produced it and the person who is looking at it' (Soulages in Ceysson, p. 81).
Soulages' paintings are rhythmic paintings. Every canvas is solidly constructed (as though knotted) around a rhythm that is both its soul and its architecture (Juin, p. 56). The organisation of the canvases depends on the unevenness of the material and the orientation of the streaks. Sometimes it is purely vertical, a great upward thrust, other times it is a series of more or less parallel or lateral forms. Certain bright surfaces pass onto dark ones and vice-versa, always a similar order characteristic of each painting. 'Smooth surfaces contrast with ridges, ruptures and silences; a rhythm' (Soulages in Juliet, p. 9).
The source of light in Soulages' late all-over black paintings is very different from his early work. In the fifties, the light in the works came from the bare, white canvas behind the imposing black signs. Even in his more subtle work of the late sixties the light still comes from behind the black, from the small sections of the pale ground which are revealed by the black. However in his later work the light now comes from outside the canvas from the space the painting occupies. Soulages enjoys orchestrating this light by controlling the layout of the work, the circulation, and the natural or artificial light sources, all the parameters that accommodate his work. This requires and stimulates his collaboration with the curators of museums where he shows (Soulages 1982, p. 49).
Soulages, like Still, Rothko and Newman in America in the late fifties, went beyond easel dimensions to a format less dwarfing than a true mural but vast enough to offer a personal challenge of a kind reflecting the then current revival of interest in the concept of the sublime. The sublime this time around meant another strategy towards the intensification of human experience (Anfam, p. 146). Before Soulages' work, the spectator is not invited to see or to observe the dynamism; he is rather commanded by this dynamic, he experiences it. On museum walls, the painting is nothing so long as eyes do not come to awaken it. It is the spectator who gives it its final meaning (Juin, p. 14).
In the last few years, Soulages' work has changed again. His latest work was shown at Galerie Alice Pauli in Lausanne at the exhibition Soulages, Peintures1999-2000 and was also included in the recent exhibition at Les Abattoirs, Toulouse. He has gone back to leaving areas of white and transparent areas of paint beneath the black allowing the light to shine through from the canvas. Painting 324 x 181, 14 March 1999 is an example of how Soulages' work has developed. The top and bottom panels show combed black paint, characteristic of his all-over black paintings from the seventies. In the second panel from the bottom, the ridges catching the light are deeper and wider, giving a more pronounced reflective light, while the panel over this, has horizontal bands of light coming from the exposed canvas. The surface of this work is concentrated on the horizontal; the ridges are parallel but different in thickness and treatment. Pierre Encrevé has said:
'[Soulages] reaches in these paintings an absolute classicism in the unity of the pigment, the unity of the technique and the unity of the surface texture offering a light never seen before' Encrevé in Soulages 82 Peintures, p. 18).
In these later works, he has combined the different ways in which he has represented light in his paintings. In this manner, he achieves a full tonal range of light with the glow emanating from the canvas always being brighter than the reflected light on the texture of the paint.
An exibition entitled Noir Lumière and focusing on the light in Soulages' black paintings was held at the Museé D'Art Modern de la Ville de Paris in June 1996. Soulages commented on the exhibition: 'To underline the relationship of my painting to a pictorial light [...] I welcome it with pleasure' (Ragon, p. 100). Light has always been of great importance in his work. He has said 'it is not the physical subject of the surface that guides me, nor the colour but the light which is borne in the course of this work' (Soulages in Creysson, p. 91). And in centring this show around black always present in his painting, he is reminded of René Char's phrase (on black): 'its mental field is the centre of everything unforeseen of every paroxysm'(Ragon, p. 100).
When asked why he has consistently used black in his work, Soulages simply replies: 'it is because …' (Meschonnic 2000, p. 184). In an interview with Charles Juliet he says 'I have only the imperious desire, the constant concern to intensify, to explore and communicate what black carries in itself ' (Soulages in Juliet, p. 12). Soulages' painting which is, above all, the revelation of black as a rich and infinitely varied colour, is also the majestic revelation of light in black paintings (Juin, pp. 50, f.).
People often reflect about colour in painting, but for Soulages what is important is light. In his work, black illuminates white, transparency contrasts with darkness and traces in the paint reveal a hidden inner light. In his early work, black was a source of powerful contrasts, which lit up all the neighbouring tones. His use of black progressed in the sixties so that scraping back the black paint revealed colour and light. They took on a brilliance that did not come from the light received and reflected by the canvas, but seemed to emanate from inside the canvas itself. In contrast to this, the work he began to carry out in the seventies has no longer colour and light showing through the paint. Instead, there is an over-all sumptuously painted, black surface. The light is coming from outside the canvas and is picked up on the texture of the paint. Bernard Ceysson, comments on Soulages' all-over black paintings:
'A flood of light seems to bathe the black texture of Soulages' latest paintings, clinging to the rough places and shimmering on the smooth ones. Black has become Matisse's "colour of light"as in the Still Life with Magnolias,where, as he says, a gleam of sunlight is conjured up by a black patch' (Soulages in Ceysson, p.46).
In his latest work, he has begun to combine the way he worked in the fifties and sixties with his subsequent work. The result is that the light is coming from within the canvas itself as well as from the reflections off the ridges and bumps of the painted surface. In this way, Soulages gives us a full tonal range of his representation of light.
Soulages' paintings need to be experienced. As the viewer passes by their large size and in some cases their elongated format transform and come to life. From left to right and from right to left, what one sees is only revealed by movement and participation, all the time revealing a rhythm and a constantly changing play of light on black. Compositionally, the canvas always works, from all viewpoints; it is this attention to detail that is remarkable. In his early work, Soulages was concerned with independence and liberty which he sought through simultaneity. He says of his later work: 'Now, in another way, I find a similar requirement: the painting is made with the light at the moment one looks at it. More than ever this painting is living in the present' (Soulages in Juliet, p. 21). David Quéré remarks about Soulages' painting:
'[...] because it generates and carries its own light, and therefore a particular heartbeat, it seems to me that a painting of Soulages also invents, necessarily, a time that is appropriate for itself, a sort of permanent present' (Quéré in Soulages 82 Peintures, p. 25).
In Soulages' painting, the world is not recorded object by object. Instead, he proposes to the spectators imagination an experience of the world that the latter can compare to his own. He works intuitively and believes that reality, the thing that is actually being done, is much more important than the project itself. When asked does he have a very definite idea what he is going to do when he starts to work, Soulages says, 'No or if I do it gets so changed in the process that one would no longer recognise it at the end' (Arnault-Tran 1977, p. 50). He goes on to state,
'There is a constant need for organization. I organize the light, which is borne on and through the paint. And then there are always the unforeseen things which open up new and more interesting possibilities than those I originally had in mind' (Soulages in Peppiatt, p. 162).
Soulages' paintings stand out black, powerful and compelling. Throughout his life he kept away from different groups and cliques. What was important for him was his passion for painting and a constant questioning of rules and practices. This has continued right up to the present. Soulages is eighty-two years old and yet, he has produced some of his most innovative work in the last few years. He remained consistent in his use of black and his persistent search for light in this colour. 'The result was a profound and lasting revolution in painting whose effects are still being felt to-day: a reappraisal of both the ends and the means of the painters' art' (Soulages in Ceysson, p. 28).
In attempting to describe the blinding experience of ecstasy, mystics have made frequent use of poetic images where darkness and light are one: '"The elemental, absolute, incorruptible mysteries of the knowledge of God are revealed in the more than luminous darkness of silence" (Dionysius the Areopagyite). "You shall rise in pure ecstasy to the dark ray of divine superessence", (Pseudo-Dionysius). "The brightness of this divine and dark light". (Saint John of the Cross)' (Ceysson 1980, p. 18). Soulages' black, yet intensely luminous canvases reveal that darkness and light are one and they prove that 'It is in the heart of what is black that what is light appears with the greatest density and the greatest meaning' (Juin, p. 50).
Soulages over the years has had the courage to work independently. He has held faithfully to the exploration of his experience of both his physical and spiritual environment and to the development of his own rich sensibility and innovative, technical ability. His goal, the search for light has been simple, but in its simplicity, it is profound. Pierre Soulages has succeeded in producing a conclusive oeuvre.
1 Translations from the French used in this essay have been carried out by Katie O'Donovan.
Bibliography
ANFAM, David, Abstract Expressionism, London: Thames and Hudson, 1990.
CEYSSON, Bernard, Soulages, Paris: Flammarion, 1979.
CEYSSON, Bernard, translated by Shirley Jennings, Soulages, New York: Crown Publishers 1980.
DUBY, Georges, HECK, Christian, SOULAGES, Pierre and FLEURY, Jean-Dominique, Conques Les Vitraux de Soulages, France: Seuil, 1994.
ENCREVE, Pierre, Soulages; l'oeuvre complet, Peintures, Vol. 1 (1946-1959), Vol. 2 (1959-1978) and Vol. 3 (1979-1997), Paris: Seuil, 1994, 1995, 1998.
GOETHE, Wolfgang von, Johann, 1749-1832, Goethe's Approach to Colour, extract from Goethe's Scientific Work/Translation, Hastings: Metaphysical Research Group, 1960.
JUIN, Herbert, translated by Chevalier Haakon, Soulages, New York: Grove Press Inc. London: Evergreen Books Ltd, 1960.
MAERZ , Ä. and Paul M. Rea, A Dictionary of Color, New York, Toronto, London: McGraw-Hill Book Company Inc. 1950.
MESCHONNIC, Henri, Le Rythme et la Lumière avec Pierre Soulages, Paris: Odile Jacob, 2000.
OXFORD English Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962.
SARTRE, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness, London and New York: Routledge, 1972.
SWEENEY, James Johnson, Pierre Soulages, London: Phaidon, 1972.
TERENZIO, Stephenie, Robert Motherwell and Black, Connecticut: Petersburg Press, 1980.
Articles
ARNAULT-TRAN, Martine, 'Pierre Soulages A Eulogy of Biting', Cimaise, Vol. 44, January - March, 1997, pp. 47-50.
PEPPIATT, Michael, 'An Interview with Pierre Soulages'', Art International, Vol. 24, part 3-4, November - December, 1980, pp. 157-173.
RAGON, Michel, 'Noir de Soulages', Cimaise, Vol. 43, April-June, 1996, pp. 97-100.
WHYTE, Sally, 'Gallerie Alice Pauli, Lausanne; Exhibition', Arts Review, Vol. 42, June, 1990, p. 364.
Catalogues
CEYSSON, Bernard, Soulages, Peintures 1999-2000, Lausanne: Galerie Alice Pauli, 2000.
DUBY, Georges andLABBAYEh, Christian, Soulages; Eaux-Fortes, Lithographies 1952-1973, Paris: Arts et Metiers Graphiques, 1974.
JULIET, Charles, Pierre Soulages, Peintures de 1984-1986, 18th October to 13th December, Paris: Galerie de France, 1986.
MOUSSEIGNE, Alain, ENCREVE, Pierre, QUERE, David, MESCHONNIC, Henri, SOULAGES, Pierre and MORALES, Bernadette, Soulages 82 peintures, 17th November 2000 to 18th February 2001, Toulouse: Les Abattoirs, 2000.
SOULAGES , 22nd June to 21st July 1979, Kruishouten: Veranneman Foundation, 1979.
SOULAGES; Exhibition in Celebration of Århus Festuge, Denmark: Århus Kunstbygning af 1847, 1982.
SOULAGES; Noir Lumière, Paris: Musee D'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1996
