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Lot Essay
In Pierre Soulages’ Peinture 130 x 92 cm, 20 septembre 2003, a myriad of slanted trails criss-cross the upper portion of the canvas until they are interrupted by a horizontal solid block in the centre, as a vast stretch of warm brown unfolds below. The work provides an overview of the full range of techniques used in the Outrenoirs, a series that the artist began in the springtime of 1979 and which he continues today. He plays with smooth and furrowed textures, alternating between areas of matte and shine and occasional making use of another color that emerges from the depths of the piece. The Outrenoir series invites the viewer to cross a border, to enter a foreign country, and to reconsider the painting beyond the fixedness of the canvas. Black is not so much understood as a color, but as a raw material and a light.
As such, depending on the position from which the work is viewed and the lighting conditions under which it is observed, each Outrenoir presents a continually changing appearance. The thick acrylic paste medium makes every bold stroke possible: along grooves and crests, fibrous and smooth blocks and areas that reflect or absorb the light, the black can take on undertones of charcoal, greyish blue, and sometimes even almost white. Since the light always casts a different appearance according to the position from which it is observed, each Outrenoir work is constantly in flux, allowing the viewer to experience total solitude in examining it. As Jacques Lacan said, “The painting must be in my sight. But I am also in the painting. What is light is looking at me” (J. Lacan, Le Séminaire, tome 11 : les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse, Paris, 1973, pp. 93-94).
Use of the chromatic tonality of walnut stain is extremely rare among the Outrenoirs: there is a single other example among all the works executed since 1997, assembled by Pierre Encrevé in the fourth volume of his Œuvre complet des peintures. In this collection, he considers Peinture 130 x 92 cm, 20 septembre 2003 within Soulages’ broader oeuvre, holding it up as a reference to one of the first materials that the artist used in the late 1940s. With its chromatic contrast between brown and black, as well as its vertical composition accentuated by striations of texture that rise up towards the top of the surface, the work also evokes the painter’s fascination with The Battle of San Romano by Paolo Uccello, which he expresses in what could be a confession of faith in his own work: “It is one of the prime pieces of the Louvre. The reason for that is its rigour: the spears, the stamping of legs, the repetition, the verticality that is perpetually broken up by slants, the space created by this repetitive rhythm, apparently uniform; and all this being lightened by a few decorative curves (the banners) […] the inextricable mixture of coherency and incoherency” (P. Soulages, quoted in M. Ragon, Les Ateliers de Soulages, Paris, 1990, p. 103).
As such, depending on the position from which the work is viewed and the lighting conditions under which it is observed, each Outrenoir presents a continually changing appearance. The thick acrylic paste medium makes every bold stroke possible: along grooves and crests, fibrous and smooth blocks and areas that reflect or absorb the light, the black can take on undertones of charcoal, greyish blue, and sometimes even almost white. Since the light always casts a different appearance according to the position from which it is observed, each Outrenoir work is constantly in flux, allowing the viewer to experience total solitude in examining it. As Jacques Lacan said, “The painting must be in my sight. But I am also in the painting. What is light is looking at me” (J. Lacan, Le Séminaire, tome 11 : les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse, Paris, 1973, pp. 93-94).
Use of the chromatic tonality of walnut stain is extremely rare among the Outrenoirs: there is a single other example among all the works executed since 1997, assembled by Pierre Encrevé in the fourth volume of his Œuvre complet des peintures. In this collection, he considers Peinture 130 x 92 cm, 20 septembre 2003 within Soulages’ broader oeuvre, holding it up as a reference to one of the first materials that the artist used in the late 1940s. With its chromatic contrast between brown and black, as well as its vertical composition accentuated by striations of texture that rise up towards the top of the surface, the work also evokes the painter’s fascination with The Battle of San Romano by Paolo Uccello, which he expresses in what could be a confession of faith in his own work: “It is one of the prime pieces of the Louvre. The reason for that is its rigour: the spears, the stamping of legs, the repetition, the verticality that is perpetually broken up by slants, the space created by this repetitive rhythm, apparently uniform; and all this being lightened by a few decorative curves (the banners) […] the inextricable mixture of coherency and incoherency” (P. Soulages, quoted in M. Ragon, Les Ateliers de Soulages, Paris, 1990, p. 103).