FRENCH PAINTER PIERRE SOULAGES

PIERRE SOULAGES & THE AVEYRON

INTERVIEW WITH PIERRE SOULAGES

PIERRE SOULAGES & THE AVEYRON

INTERVIEW WITH PIERRE SOULAGES

What do you remember most of your childhood days in Rodez and of the Aveyron in general?

I have two birthplaces: Rodez and contemporary painting. I spent my childhood and my teenage years in the Rouergue. A province I love. My father was a coachbuilder, he manufactured horse-drawn carriages. I was 5 when he died. So, I grew up with two mothers: my real mother, Aglaé, and my sister, who was fifteen years older than me, and who also was my philosophy teacher when I was in highschool. My mother was a woman of the old days, she could barely write but knew how to read.

After my father's death, she ran a ''hunting-fishing-rigging'' shop. When I was 19, I went to Paris and then to Montpellier. But when I was a teen in Rodez, I had already discovered a reproduction of a cave painting, the Altamira bison, in a history book. It was as though a whole part of art had been revealed to me, as though I was questioning everything that had been made since the origin of mankind. Then, I accompanied an archeologist who was excavating dolmens. This is how, when I was 18, my name entered a museum–the Fenaille Museum–associated with the objects we had found (such as potsherds, prehistoric arrowheads, and so on). It had nothing to do with painting yet! Then I wondered, ''why is there nothing from the Middle Ages?'' So, I did some research and discovered Romanesque paintings. It was another shock. These are my aesthetic roots. As you can see, they don't all come from Rodez, even though everything started there, in that very region, not to mention Conques' sublime architecture and the statues-menhirs.

How did those works shape both your vocation and your vision of art?

They freed me from what I was taught. I soon realized that we were locked in a very narrow-minded vision of art history, restricted to a few centuries. I wanted to free myself from that imprisonment, the same prison I was locked in rue Combarel, where I was born. Whenever I had the chance, I would go down the Aveyron's riverbanks which surround Rodez to go fishing or accompany the poachers. I still love the wide spaces of the Causses and the Aubrac, where I used to go on holiday when I was a child.

Did that taste of yours for uncluttered spaces find a resonance in your works?

It certainly did. My aesthetic choices have ethical equivalents, interacting with the world and things. I feel closer to stone, wood and rust than nickel or lacquer. I'm

more into clay than chrome.

This inclination appears in your relation to matter...

When I did my etchings, corroding copper, I was thinking that, in the end, corrosion is time trapped by matter. When you erode copper with acid, you do, in ten minutes, what would take centuries for Nature to do.

From 1979, the way you studied the relection of light gave a new dimension to your work...

I've always been interested in what I didn't know. I still am. This is what led me to the Outrenoir, a light reflected by different layers or black. Black is the original colour of

painting. For centuries, the cavemen, in their black pitch caves, would paint with black. Black is also the colour of our origin. Before we were born, weren't we plunged into darkness? I was once told that, as a child, I would plunge my brush in the inkwell to draw long black lines on White paper. ''What are you doing?'', they woud ask. I would answer: ''Snow.'' That didn't go unnoticed. Perhaps I was trying, by contrast, to make the paper whiter than it really was by confronting it to black colour. My taste for black dates back to my childhood. Contrary to most people, I could not see any particular symbolism to it. Black is often the colour of mourning. It is a short-sighted and codified way to consider it. Black was also the colour of the gowns and religious habits of Benedictine nuns. All at once austerity, feast, anarchy, rebellion and authority. Whenever I had the chance, at the age of 16 or 17, I would dress in black. My mother was absolutely shocked. She said to me :''You're mourning me already!''

You made your first paintings in Rodez...

Yes, but I was still in my early stages. In the beginning, I really liked to draw the leafless trees in winter. The way they would write space, so to speak. It all comes from there. From that sort of abstract sculptures. What is art if not something that moves you thanks to the features of painted forms? I've always looked for the presence of the works or the objects that were in front me. In my current works, that presence is even more obvious, you see reflections of it. The light changes, at Conques for instance where, from dawn to dusk, the stained-glass windows are never the same. Same goes for my ''black'' paintings. If you move, they're not quite the same anymore. When you look at them, their presence lies in the moment of your contemplation. In that very moment. The relation to space is different. The very space of the canvas is in front of the light that comes towards you from the canvas, and the person who's looking at it is also in that space.

The architecture of Conques deeply moved you when you first visited it, at the age of 12 or 13, so much so that you were certain that you life should be dedicated to art. Why did you turn to painting instead of architecture?

Because that's what I was doing already. I've always painted. At Conques, I was deeply moved, yes. It's been said that the Romanesque sculptors were clumsy, but I

could only see how they mimicked shapes. I understood that art was what mattered the most. It seemed as though people around were wasting their lives earning it. They were not happy. On Sundays, they would behave weirdly, as if they were bored. I didn't want to be like them. I felt that the only thing that could fulfill my life was painting. I would become a painter. But I did not tell that to my ''wives'', my ''mothers'', for I was afraid they would try to put me off. For I knew I was too weak to defy their authority. I kept that intimate vocation secret, but they found out soon enough. They tried to put me off and send me to medicine school. I resisted. Later, eventually, my mother who was a very sensible woman said, ''He did his national

service, he's a grown-up. Let him do what he wants.''

When you did Conques' stained-glass windows, you came back to your roots, both personal and artistic...

It was during Jack Lang's first mandate at the Ministry of Culture. Three times I had been asked to do stainedglass windows for an historical monument. I had always

turned these requests down but, when they told me about Conques abbey-church, I was overwhelmed. Especially as my wife, with whom I went to Conques for our honeymoon, was in the atelier at that time. I accepted, saying: ''You know, ministers place lots of orders well knowing that, after they leave, their successors won't necessarily fulfil them.'' And yet, François Léotard took over the project after Jack Lang left. To make the stained-glass windows, I refused to draw sketches. I remember that Jack Lang, who had come back after François Léotard had left, always asked how the project was going. ''He's looking for a light'', people said. I was busy creating a

glass that would fit that unique light displayed at Conques abbey-church. It took me seven years.

When you left Rodez, what did you think of the town? What do you think of it today?

I remained very close to the town. But the ''old province'' that I used to know, the old craftsmen, the old Rodez, all of this disappeared. A landscape remains, a place housing mangificent monuments such as the Fenaille Museum, the statues-menhirs, the cathedral, Conques in the near distance, the Aubrac and Causses plateaus. The originality of Rodez lies there: a market between two geologically different areas. The Causses and the Segala, the ''country of rye'' that became the ''country of wheat'' when the railway allowed us to carry lime and enrich the soil. It changed people's lives. And there's still the Aveyron, of course. Even though trouts and fish, like anywhere else, are disappearing. And finally, I think that people nowadays are more open to modernity than their ancestors. There's been progress.

Do you see yourself as a native son?

Absolutely! Native of that country that saw many generations live and survive. One only needs to read the works of Emmanuel Le Roy, a great historian and a true ''Rouergue-lover''. He tells horryfing things about the misery of a province that was kept away from any kind of influence for a very long time. Deep inside, I'm a provincial and still am. I don't belong to any clique, I never mingled with the

Parisian artistic scene, and I don't attend opening exhibitions. I have friends, but I'm not a socialite. When I come back to Rodez, I feel that I'm part of the people living

here, these apparently coarse farmers, but very refined in reality. Down-to-earth and subtle. One of their best representatives would be the triple Michelin-starred chef,

Michel Bras, an Aubrac fanatic. As a child, I would spend a lot of time with the fishermen and the hunters. They are accurate and have a natural sense of observation. These skills tend to disappear. We are overwhelmed with images that are constantly thrown in our faces. So much so that we no longer know how to watch. We pay attention to nothing, we don't see the details. They know how to see. I think I use this in my painting. I feel I belong to the same ''ethnic group''.

http://musee-soulages.grand-rodez.com/museum-soulages/

You may visit Musee Soulages' news design by RCR Architectes and Passelac & Roques and Pierre Soulages's retrospective at Musee Soulages  from my blog archive to click below links.

http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com/2014/08/musee-soulages-design-by-rcr.html
http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2014/09/pierre-soulages-retrospective-at-musee.html

EAU - FORTE XIV

Aquatint Etching

'' PEINTURE 202 x 202 cm - 13 SEPTEMBRE 2013 ''

Acrylic on Canvas

79 1/2 x 79 1/2 inches - 202 x 202 cm
Soulages Archives, 2014 
Photo © Vincent Cunillere

Soulages Archives, 2014. Photo: © Vincent Cunillère 

'' PEINTURE 309 x 181 cm - 12 DECEMBRE 2013 ''

Acrylic on canvas - 309 x 181 cm

Soulages Archives, 2014 
Photo © Vincent Cunillere

Soulages Archives, 2014. Photo: © Vincent Cunillère

'' PEINTURE 175 x 222 cm - 23 MAI 2013 ''

Acrylic on Canvas

68 7/8 x 87 3/8 inches - 175 x 222 cm
Soulages Archives, 2014 
Photo © Vincent Cunillere

'' PEINTURE 162 x 114 cm - 28 DECEMBRE 1959 '' 1959
Oil on Canvas

Dimension: 162 x 114 cm

'' PEINTURE 165 x 74 cm - 30 AOUT 2013 ''

Acrylic on Canvas - 165 x 74 cm

Soulages Archives, 2014 
Photo © Vincent Cunillere

PEINTURE – 17 JANUARY 1970

Diemension: 202 x 327 cm

PEINTURE - 5  JULY 1966

Oil on canvas - 202 x 159 cm 

Donation Pierre et Colette Soulages

Musée Soulages – Rodez

GOUACHE SUR PAPIER -  1954

Gouache on paper laid on board - 65 x 50 cm

'' PEINTURE 236,5 x 303,5 cm  - 5 FEVRIER 1964 '' 
Oil on canvas - 236,5 x 303,5 cm

Courtesy of Musee d'art Contemporian, Montreal, Canada

LITHOGRAPH No: 3 - 1957

Composition 24 13/16 x 18 15/16" (63.1 x 48.1 cm)

Sheet 27 7/8 x 19 15/16" (70 x 50.7 cm)

Credit Line: Gift of William S. Lieberman

© 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

'' PEINTURE 130 x 89 cm - 8 JUIN 1959 ''

Oil on canvas - 130 x 89 cm

Private Collection
Photo © Soulages Archives, 2014 

Quoted from Pierre Soulages’ interview with  Hans Ulrich Obrist

HUO: What’s unusual about your paintings is that they have no title.
PS: That’s not true! They have a title: the work’s dimensions. And also the date [on which the work was completed]. I always wanted my paintings to be objects, or rather, things. That’s why the title is restricted to their material scope, which is even more pronounced with paintings attached to cables between the floor and the ceiling. A painting on a wall is a kind of window. On cables, it becomes a wall.
HUO: So paintings divide a space.
PS: They give it its tempo. They create a different space. Part of the show at the Centre Pompidou is presented along the lines of this principle, which I have been using since 1966.

https://www.perrotin.com/artiste-Pierre_Soulages-165.html

PEINTURE - 18 OCTOBER 1967

Oil on canvas

79 1/2 x 62 5/8 inches (202 x 159 cm)

Private Collection First Exhibited in North America

at the Knoedler Gallery, New York
Photo © Soulages Archives, 2014 

PAINTING 21 – 1959

PEINTURE 23 APRIL 1963

Oil on Canvas

Quoted from Pierre Soulages’ interview with  Hans Ulrich Obrist

HUO: Speaking of architecture, what are your influences there?

PS: I know a little bit about contemporary architecture since Bauhaus. I also had the chance to meet Mies van der Rohe, in Chicago in 1957. He had chosen one of my paintings for one of his students, Anderson Todd. But if you go back a bit further in time, I really like Étienne-Louis Boullée, for his writings and drawings, along with Ledoux and several others, all utopian architects. I recently received a postcard from a museum that Tadao Ando had just built—a museum that was completely underground. I visited another one, in Miho, that was partly underground, designed by I. M. Pei. They made me think back to what Boullée had written—I’m quoting from memory, here: “The parts that stick up out of the surface of the ground must make one think of what the ground is hiding from sight.” The idea of an architecture that isn’t seen but rather is imagined, or suspected, is wonderful.

https://www.perrotin.com/artiste-Pierre_Soulages-165.html

COMPOSITION 1956

'' PEINTURE 293 x 165 cm - 23 DECEMBRE 2013 ''

Acrylic on canvas

115 3/8 x 65 inches - 293 x 165 cm
Soulages Archives, 2014 
Photo © Vincent Cunillere

Soulages Archives, 2014. Photo: © Vincent Cunillère

'' PEINTURE 195 x 130 cm  - 20 NOVEMBRE 1956 '' 1956
Oil on canvas

Diemension: 195 x 130 cm
Soulages Archives, 2014 
Photo © Vincent Cunillere

'' PEINTURE 202 x 159 cm - 19 OCTOBRE 2013
Acrylic on Canvas 

Diemension: 202 x 159 cm
Soulages Archives, 2014 
Photo © Vincent Cunillere

'' PEINTURE 130 x 390 cm - 6 AOUT 2012 ''

Acrylic on Canvas -  130 x 390 cm

Soulages Archives, 2014 
Photo © Vincent Cunillere

COMPOSITION V - 1957

Etching and aquatint

Plate: 15 1/2 x 14 1/4" (39.3 x 36.2cm); Sheet: 25 7/8 x 19 3/4" (65.7 x 50.1cm)

Credit Line: Mrs. Bertram Smith Fund

© 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

NO TITLE 1956
Intaglio Print on Paper - 245 x 170 
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2014 

 Tate Collection

PIERRE SOULAGES

Since his first retrospective exhibition in Hanover, Germany in 1960, Soulages' oeuvre has been exhibited internationally without interruption, most recently with a major 2009 retrospective at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris as well as retrospectives at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico; Kunstmuseum, Berne; Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo; Museum Fridericianum, Kassel; IVAM-Centro Julio González, Valencia; Musée d'Art Contemporain, Montréal; and the National

Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul. In 2001, Soulages became the first contemporary artist to be exhibited at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

A highlight of Soulages’ career came in 1986 with a commission from the French Ministry of Culture to create a cycle of stained glass windows for the Romanesque Abbey-Church Sainte-Foy in Conques, France. What Soulages achieved at Conques, over a grueling eight-year period ending in 1994, is nothing less than a total work of art. With the authorities’ decision to re-conceptualize all the windows, the church was purged of its World War II memories, for the windows had been filled by neo-medievalist scenes commissioned in the 1940s under Marechal Petain’s collaborationist government at Vichy. Soulages’ overall scheme effectively liberated the church’s astonishing architecture and transformed it into a site-specific installation. In the glass he developed for this project, Soulages found the perfect

translucent vehicle – in essence, a transmogrified twosided painting – that, as a soft and ever changing grey-white, is equally legible from inside and outside the church. In the 104 windows he created for Sainte-Foy, Soulages rendered a battery of straight and softly arcing black lines that engage the architecture and visitors’ movement through it, as well as the winds and mountains of the surrounding Aveyron. The Sainte-Foy cycle perfectly illustrates the central concern with light that has always suffused Soulages’ abstract paintings, and vividly affirms the strong architectonic urge that had always been present in the artist’s work.

Today Pierre Soulages’ paintings are part of over a hundred museum collections, including the Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo; the Fogg Art Gallery, Harvard University; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Tate Gallery, London; the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; and the Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro.

http://www.dominique-levy.com/exhibition/pierre-soulages