“Light” and “black” are opposing forces, contradicting and refuting each other. Fused together they create an impossible oxymoron. Canceling each other out. Except when they are on one of Pierre Soulages’ canvases. One of the major abstract artists of the present day, Soulages strives to expose the powerful bond between light and black and unravel their coexisting strength. This journey is currently on display in a retrospective of the artist at the Centre Pompidou. The artist’s sixty-year career is encapsulated in over a hundred of his works starting in 1946.
Soulages’ early creations on paper experiment with the color black, playing with its transparency, fluidity, reflections and texture. Halfway through the exhibit, which also marks the midpoint in his artistic career, three giant graphite blocks unite these themes. It is Soulages’ ode to black. Its power of reflection, density and tone to give texture, depth and pattern to the canvas. Once light reflects off his block of striations, black is lifted off the painting from its dark dullness. We experience the vigor of his brushstrokes, the grooves and the richness of the color. Soulages draws inspiration from his own interaction with the material, “It's what I do that teaches me what I'm looking for” he notes. Through Soulages’ monochromatic paintings, black metamorphoses into a fourth dimension, the “Outrenoir” or ‘beyond black”, into light.
The consuming relationship continues throughout the rest of the exhibit. Soulages sculpts thick layers of black paint onto the canvas. He etches away at it using a rake, spatula or industrial brush. Light is brought to life in these engraved patterns. Soulages’ black cannot exist without light, rather the artist’s purpose is to recreate their dynamic inseparability and continuity. They are entwined in different materials and forms, melded together in a perfect confluence of interdependence,
The end of the exhibit is a grand finale. Here, Soulages’ fascination with space is fully expressed with his diptych and triptych giant creations suspended by cables. Their structural quality displays Soulages’ architectural sensitivity. Soulages expressed his resignation to impose anything on his visitors, except “to feel.” The display of paintings allows one to be free, to move around in front of and around the canvases. And to dream. Through Soulages’ paintings the paradox of “black and light” is unraveled and given new meaning. The “other-black” is discovered and fully illuminated.
