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Lot Essay
Pierre Soulages is best known for his exploration and mastery in his use of black. In Peinture, 17 Février 1969, bold black brushstrokes cover the center of the canvas, and activate the underlying ground allowing a bright cerulean to shine through. By contrast, at the lower edge of the canvas non-overlapping and receding bars of black accentuate a pale thin blue wash. This captivating effect of contrast is set in motion by the careful use of black that gives a flat visual space, a specific structure and sudden depth--real, concrete and present; thus initiating a dialectical investigation between smooth and rough, thick and thin, transparent and opaque, dark and light fields. These concrete qualities defined Soulages' colors and freed him from the abstract and restrictive concept of isolated hues. Peinture, 17 Février 1969 is a prime historical example of the artist's unique and inventive techniques and philosophy towards painting over a 20 year period, which he has extended to over 65 years today. From the beginning Soulages rejected the use of the small brushes that painters could buy after World War II in Paris. Instead, he purchased broad wall-painter's brushes, which had large wide strokes that appealed to him. In the 1950s he invented and produced a new tool to facilitate his desired mark consisting of a piece of rubber stretched between two thin boards with a long handle. These lames varied in width and hardness and could apply, mix and scrape off the paint in one and the same motion. Effectively, Soulages invented for himself a proto-squeegee technique utilized decades before Gerhard Richter's signature usage of the squeegee. Soulages used the lame in combination with stiff hard brushes that would leave distinctive grooves in the surface.
Even before Pollock, he painted with the canvas on the floor. To work with large canvases, he made himself a bridge consisting of a board on two legs so that he could push the canvas in under and stand on to be in the midst of his work. Not only was he meticulous about his tools, but also he mixed his paints with incredible care and testing their viscosity and varied hues on glass tables before boldly committing them to canvas--never with the safety of a drawing or a pre-determined plan.
While often compared with Abstract Expressionists, most notably Franz Kline for his similar usage of black and white, Soulages was not interested in the gestural for its own sake and his painting does not tell the story of his dance. While Abstract Expressionists like Mark Rothko, Franz Kline and Hans Hofmann were grounded in the landscape and others like Clyfford Still and Willem de Kooning found their way through the figure, Soulages' picture structuring, from the very beginning, aimed to suppress any message and his unique position was that he almost innately had the ability to see non-figuratively. As a child it is said that he liked to look out his window at a random blob of tar on the opposite wall, which he considered attractive because of its varying thickness and surface. One day it looked like a rooster at close quarters and this disappointed him. He often tried later when looking at it to block the image of the rooster so he could see the blob as a blob (A. Karberg, Pierre Soulages: Painting the Light, exh. cat., Klosterneuburg, 2006, p. 24). While most would amuse themselves with the opposite process his natural predisposition was not to represent but to simply, present. Great examples like the subject work demonstrate his vision and technique as it negates concepts of contour, line, surface, and form-all of which can no longer be distinguished from one another and is here simply the holistic application and re-working of different fields of paint.
In art historical surveys Soulages is often placed in the 1950s under Abstract Expressionism, Art Informel, Tachisme or "gestural painting." The multiplicity of schools is testament to the fact that in many ways he defies categorization. It is important to recognize that Soulages' work is both classic and expressive. In 1968 James Johnson Sweeney, the curator and second director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York who expanded the scope of the collection to include Abstract Expressionism, described the artist's unique place best when he said, "What is particularly striking about Soulages' work is the readiness of expression he has achieved through conscientious and consistent limitation of means. But this is the essence of his classicism. And this is what links him, shaper of a new visual language as he is, to the great line of French artists from Fouquet through Poussin to Cézanne, this monolithic integrity of vision and purpose, this courage to carry on constantly in his own lane and to work out an idiom which is only his" (quoted in G. Hénault and J. Soucy, Soulages, exh. cat., Musée du Québec, 1968, n.p.).
Even before Pollock, he painted with the canvas on the floor. To work with large canvases, he made himself a bridge consisting of a board on two legs so that he could push the canvas in under and stand on to be in the midst of his work. Not only was he meticulous about his tools, but also he mixed his paints with incredible care and testing their viscosity and varied hues on glass tables before boldly committing them to canvas--never with the safety of a drawing or a pre-determined plan.
While often compared with Abstract Expressionists, most notably Franz Kline for his similar usage of black and white, Soulages was not interested in the gestural for its own sake and his painting does not tell the story of his dance. While Abstract Expressionists like Mark Rothko, Franz Kline and Hans Hofmann were grounded in the landscape and others like Clyfford Still and Willem de Kooning found their way through the figure, Soulages' picture structuring, from the very beginning, aimed to suppress any message and his unique position was that he almost innately had the ability to see non-figuratively. As a child it is said that he liked to look out his window at a random blob of tar on the opposite wall, which he considered attractive because of its varying thickness and surface. One day it looked like a rooster at close quarters and this disappointed him. He often tried later when looking at it to block the image of the rooster so he could see the blob as a blob (A. Karberg, Pierre Soulages: Painting the Light, exh. cat., Klosterneuburg, 2006, p. 24). While most would amuse themselves with the opposite process his natural predisposition was not to represent but to simply, present. Great examples like the subject work demonstrate his vision and technique as it negates concepts of contour, line, surface, and form-all of which can no longer be distinguished from one another and is here simply the holistic application and re-working of different fields of paint.
In art historical surveys Soulages is often placed in the 1950s under Abstract Expressionism, Art Informel, Tachisme or "gestural painting." The multiplicity of schools is testament to the fact that in many ways he defies categorization. It is important to recognize that Soulages' work is both classic and expressive. In 1968 James Johnson Sweeney, the curator and second director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York who expanded the scope of the collection to include Abstract Expressionism, described the artist's unique place best when he said, "What is particularly striking about Soulages' work is the readiness of expression he has achieved through conscientious and consistent limitation of means. But this is the essence of his classicism. And this is what links him, shaper of a new visual language as he is, to the great line of French artists from Fouquet through Poussin to Cézanne, this monolithic integrity of vision and purpose, this courage to carry on constantly in his own lane and to work out an idiom which is only his" (quoted in G. Hénault and J. Soucy, Soulages, exh. cat., Musée du Québec, 1968, n.p.).