Soulages at the Center Pompidou. 14 oct 2009 to 8 march 2010
Paris celebrate
for the fourth time in this major retrospective at Beaubourg, the
painter of Conques and Black. This dynamic creation has tried to capture
this anniversary exhibition - Soulages turns 90 December 24, a good
excuse - relying on the freshness of discovery. Despite the years,
numerous international honors and French, the piles of writings on his
art, the reputation that the momentum and anesthesia often buried
emotion, he surprises. How to watch Soulages,
this giant that manufactures its tools as the first artist of humanity?
In young revolutionary of yesterday or master side today? In head to
head with the work, as when one suddenly discovers a world where intact
and true man has left his hand and his mind, answered this odyssey
museum sixty years of painting, always a revolution yet our time when
artists are painting their ideas by others. Pierre Encrevé,
author of the catalog, and Alfred Pacquement, director of the National
Museum of Modern Art, are the Commissioners of this retrospective makes
the artist the exact extent of his life, blasting the narrow framework
of abstract painter of 'post-war French collected before the hour in
America. In the manner of an opera where each topic is presented before
the final table that compares and combines it does not follow the
chronology here until the discovery of Outrenoir (1979) then to dive
into all the work whole, the only language of forms, ballet black major
polyptychs suspended in space like magic. Thirty years ago,
Beaubourg Soulages already devoted a major exhibition. Thirty years
later, his third retrospective account of works after 1993, proof that
the painter is the contemporary artist that finds an enthusiastic
audience, the Museum of Modern Art in the City of Paris at the
Musée Fabre, Montpellier . Miracle? It was soon taken off by
the monumental paintings, these compositions more thoughts than it
seems, where the painter's hand is dominant, structure and betrays the
color as a blade (Painting 130 × 162 cm, August 6 1959,
private collection) or sunset (Painting 202 × 125 cm,
December 15, 1959, private collection). When darkness pervades
everything, refined look and taste of the game mat and shiny, thick
material or striped (Painting 293 × 324 cm, October 26, 1994,
Essl Museum, Vienna), discovers a landscape brief. "The Abyss? On the
chromatic Soulages's work is far more complex and diverse than the
formula suggests the literary contests Alfred Pacquement, happy to
finally see this retrospective in his museum. It begins with the husk
of nuts. It invades the space with very large size where color appeared
in the dark. Then she plays light with the land-all of which are
sculptures paintings. It has some very formal, very identified, others
more experimental. We had to find the installation mode in the space
that shows the great vitality of relief, its continuity and its
perpetual search. " On Wednesday, the floor
will be all. "The public reaction always brings me," we replied
Soulages, both proud and modest. "I quote William IX, Duke of Aquitaine
and Languedoc poet of the eleventh century, with the pure nothing,
executed the commonplaces of poetry in some verses:" This pure nothing,
he says, I made while I was sleeping on my horse one night on a high
mountain. I can not help it if I was bewitched by a fairy (...) This
poem, I'll send there to Anjou to that which I will refer his case
against the key. " This is the creative
role of the viewer, agrees Soulages, vibrant as its language of Oc. The
reality of a work is three things. The thing is, on which the senses
can come and get rid of. A man who made it. And whoever looks. "
