.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
‘Here is where unconscious excavations, engulfed colours, come to the surface, just as violent earthquakes rip volcanic earth from the seabed and shape it into new islands. ’——Jean Grenier
Bold and rhythmic, Pierre Soulages’s Peinture 162 x 130cm, 26 mai 1963 is populated with thick and glistening passages of black paint that veil a field of translucent, gauzy crimson radiates underneath. Created in 1963, the present work brilliantly exemplifies the artist’s career-long study of light by exploring the full potential of oil paint’s physical qualities—what he refers to as its’ physiognomic’ nature. Instead of recording gesture or emotion in his mark-making, Soulages arranges contrasts into a united, potent surface to be perceived in its totality. The sheer volume of dark impasto contrasts with the bright embers of the background, orchestrating a dynamic interplay that is magnified by the punctual, balanced composition of the picture as a whole. Selected by the notable New York art dealer Samual Kootz to be included in the artist’s solo exhibition at the Kootz Gallery in 1964 before it was shown at Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, in 1971, the present work was later forming part of the Essl Collection since the early 1990s and has been exhibited extensively in the following two decades, including the artist’s solo exhibition Pierre Soulages: Painting the Light at the museum and Paths of Abstract Painting, Monet, Kandinsky, Rothko, and the Consequences at Kunstforum, Vienna. In 2019, the Musée du Louvre mounted a retrospective exhibition for Soulages in celebration of his centenary as a living artist, an honour given only to Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall before him.
Peinture 162 x 130cm, 26 mai 1963 was painted during the height of Soulages’ use of the raclage technique, which was a pivotal point in his career typified by phenomenal, unwavering consistency. Distinct from the structured, linear interlocking beams of paint that characterised his early period between the 1940s and 1950s, the present work strikes a balance between heaviness and weightlessness—creating complex translucencies through the controlled layering and scraping-away of pigment. ‘The years 1957-63 particularly illustrate one of Soulages’ characteristic technique in the double treatment of the surface: that of scraping, or, if one prefers, transparency through uncovering…’ Pierre Encrevé writes, ‘he applies a layer of paint covering part or all of the surface, upon which he superimposes, while the paint is fresh, one or more layers of different colour. He then uncovers a part of the background using the same soft-bladed spatulas that he more often loads with black paint… A subtle mixture of the different layers’ colours is created…these mixtures, these disappearances—reappearances under the blade-scraped veils of black where the “transfigured” colour acquires a presence of a very particular emotional intensity’ (P. Encrevé, ‘Le noir et l’outrenoir’, in Soulages: Noir Lumière, exh. cat. Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris 1996, p. 30). In the present work, the drama is unmistakable; its warm and dark details call to mind an enigmatic grandeur befitting the Old Masters.
It was also during this period that Soulages experimented with his painting process by giving emptiness and white space primacy. The artist would lay the canvas on the floor and pour fluid paint onto it while consciously leaving certain areas empty—as in this example, the white in the four corners. Using a brush to spread the black paint through a large flat surface in different speeds, directions, and depths, Soulages gives pace to the canvas in relation to his own movement while making the work, as Vailland observed during his visit to the artist’s studio in 1961, ‘He (Soulages) surrenders himself to a kind of dance. Between each application of paint (black), he takes four steps back, four steps forward, which puts the whole body in play…’ (R. Vailland, in ‘Comment travaille Pierre Soulages’, L’Oeil, no. 77, May 1961, p. 46). Here, Soulages’ majestic sweeps of black paint are softened into an imposing solid mass. Leaving significant antecedent layers on the canvas, Soulages transformed the most impenetrable black into a sublimely translucent surface where tints of orangé de mars beneath emanate through. Equally, the artist allows the solid black paint to drip and bleed around the edges after diluting it with turpentine, turning these seemingly random marks into a vigorous compositional unity that speaks of the action of painting.
Like his friend Zao Wou-Ki, who saw the oracle bones from ancient China as inspirational, Soulages was deeply thrilled by the 20,000-year-old cave paintings of Lascaux discovered in 1940, and later, the even older cave art found in Grotte Chauvet-Pont d'Arc, Ardèche, in 1994. Soulages considers such rough-hewn depictions far more affecting than the most refined mimic triumphs of classical art. He is inspired by their intensity and vitality, as well as their yearning to escape the transient. As he puts it, ‘I have always revolted against this foolishly evolutionary conception of art, which leads one to believe that there are at first awkward groping, then that technique becomes more and more skilful and mastered...The painters of Lascaux or Chauvet brought art to a summit from the very start’ (P. Soulages, quoted in F. Jaunin (ed.), Pierre Soulages: Outrenoir: Entretiens avec Françoise Jaunin, Lausanne 2014, p. 45-46). Soulages' palette, as shown in Peinture 162 x 130cm, 26 mai 1963, has barely departed from the rich, primitive reds, blacks, and ochres employed by ancient artists who painted in the lightless caves. The present work, with its powerful, calligraphic emblems of red and black against the bone-white background, has a striking resemblance to the dark beasts discovered in those limestone caverns; like them, it resonates with an immortal, undeniable presence.
Bold and rhythmic, Pierre Soulages’s Peinture 162 x 130cm, 26 mai 1963 is populated with thick and glistening passages of black paint that veil a field of translucent, gauzy crimson radiates underneath. Created in 1963, the present work brilliantly exemplifies the artist’s career-long study of light by exploring the full potential of oil paint’s physical qualities—what he refers to as its’ physiognomic’ nature. Instead of recording gesture or emotion in his mark-making, Soulages arranges contrasts into a united, potent surface to be perceived in its totality. The sheer volume of dark impasto contrasts with the bright embers of the background, orchestrating a dynamic interplay that is magnified by the punctual, balanced composition of the picture as a whole. Selected by the notable New York art dealer Samual Kootz to be included in the artist’s solo exhibition at the Kootz Gallery in 1964 before it was shown at Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, in 1971, the present work was later forming part of the Essl Collection since the early 1990s and has been exhibited extensively in the following two decades, including the artist’s solo exhibition Pierre Soulages: Painting the Light at the museum and Paths of Abstract Painting, Monet, Kandinsky, Rothko, and the Consequences at Kunstforum, Vienna. In 2019, the Musée du Louvre mounted a retrospective exhibition for Soulages in celebration of his centenary as a living artist, an honour given only to Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall before him.
Peinture 162 x 130cm, 26 mai 1963 was painted during the height of Soulages’ use of the raclage technique, which was a pivotal point in his career typified by phenomenal, unwavering consistency. Distinct from the structured, linear interlocking beams of paint that characterised his early period between the 1940s and 1950s, the present work strikes a balance between heaviness and weightlessness—creating complex translucencies through the controlled layering and scraping-away of pigment. ‘The years 1957-63 particularly illustrate one of Soulages’ characteristic technique in the double treatment of the surface: that of scraping, or, if one prefers, transparency through uncovering…’ Pierre Encrevé writes, ‘he applies a layer of paint covering part or all of the surface, upon which he superimposes, while the paint is fresh, one or more layers of different colour. He then uncovers a part of the background using the same soft-bladed spatulas that he more often loads with black paint… A subtle mixture of the different layers’ colours is created…these mixtures, these disappearances—reappearances under the blade-scraped veils of black where the “transfigured” colour acquires a presence of a very particular emotional intensity’ (P. Encrevé, ‘Le noir et l’outrenoir’, in Soulages: Noir Lumière, exh. cat. Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris 1996, p. 30). In the present work, the drama is unmistakable; its warm and dark details call to mind an enigmatic grandeur befitting the Old Masters.
It was also during this period that Soulages experimented with his painting process by giving emptiness and white space primacy. The artist would lay the canvas on the floor and pour fluid paint onto it while consciously leaving certain areas empty—as in this example, the white in the four corners. Using a brush to spread the black paint through a large flat surface in different speeds, directions, and depths, Soulages gives pace to the canvas in relation to his own movement while making the work, as Vailland observed during his visit to the artist’s studio in 1961, ‘He (Soulages) surrenders himself to a kind of dance. Between each application of paint (black), he takes four steps back, four steps forward, which puts the whole body in play…’ (R. Vailland, in ‘Comment travaille Pierre Soulages’, L’Oeil, no. 77, May 1961, p. 46). Here, Soulages’ majestic sweeps of black paint are softened into an imposing solid mass. Leaving significant antecedent layers on the canvas, Soulages transformed the most impenetrable black into a sublimely translucent surface where tints of orangé de mars beneath emanate through. Equally, the artist allows the solid black paint to drip and bleed around the edges after diluting it with turpentine, turning these seemingly random marks into a vigorous compositional unity that speaks of the action of painting.
Like his friend Zao Wou-Ki, who saw the oracle bones from ancient China as inspirational, Soulages was deeply thrilled by the 20,000-year-old cave paintings of Lascaux discovered in 1940, and later, the even older cave art found in Grotte Chauvet-Pont d'Arc, Ardèche, in 1994. Soulages considers such rough-hewn depictions far more affecting than the most refined mimic triumphs of classical art. He is inspired by their intensity and vitality, as well as their yearning to escape the transient. As he puts it, ‘I have always revolted against this foolishly evolutionary conception of art, which leads one to believe that there are at first awkward groping, then that technique becomes more and more skilful and mastered...The painters of Lascaux or Chauvet brought art to a summit from the very start’ (P. Soulages, quoted in F. Jaunin (ed.), Pierre Soulages: Outrenoir: Entretiens avec Françoise Jaunin, Lausanne 2014, p. 45-46). Soulages' palette, as shown in Peinture 162 x 130cm, 26 mai 1963, has barely departed from the rich, primitive reds, blacks, and ochres employed by ancient artists who painted in the lightless caves. The present work, with its powerful, calligraphic emblems of red and black against the bone-white background, has a striking resemblance to the dark beasts discovered in those limestone caverns; like them, it resonates with an immortal, undeniable presence.