Pierre Soulages, Lithographie n° 8 (Lithograph No. 8), 1958. Featured in Pierre Soulages: Une Lumière Infinie.
Just last October, France mourned the passing of their favorite living artist, Pierre Soulages (1919–2022). He is for many a deeper, more resonant alternative to New York’s Ab Ex painters. In France, nothing could be more clear: his extraordinary visual gravitas captured the enigmatic grandeur of the Post-war years like no other.
The artist invented the term Outrenoir to aid others in understanding the perplexing richness of his lifelong obsession with the color black. There is no comparable word in English. Various attempts at translation include ‘beyond black’ and ‘unaccountable.’ It encompasses the magnitude of the Existentialist ethos that has empowered the greatest of the French intellectuals even to this day.
Exhibition /
Phillips X + ARCHEUS / POST-MODERN
Pierre Soulages: Une Lumière Infinie
On view London 1 – 12 February
See the works >
Our fecund human journey skittering through time from nothing to being and nothingness again,
Like the Ancient ones at Chauvet and Lascaux descending down to paint charcoal trembling on the cave walls in total darkness,
In inky black dots on the Spotted Horses of Pech Merle, for instance…
The freedom of Outre-Manche, outre-Rhin, outrenoir — another country, beyond black.
Or the vehement boulevardiers and intellectuels at Le Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots on St. Germain in the Quartier Latin,
Hanging on the sudden flash and pounce of sparkle in the stark black pauses between ponderous words,
Like Allen Ginsberg’s friends who cast their ballot with watches tossed from rooftops,
To touch the fecund gaps of noir incarnate with eternity outside of time.
Or the medieval Romanesque master masons and stone carvers,
Waiting for centuries in the solemn shadows of Abbé de Sainte-Foy at Conques,
In hushed anticipation for their fait accompli in Soulages’ tender lick of light,
projecting into the great beyond everlasting,
like a question bringing sense to chaos, better by far than any answer that is dreamt of in our philosphies.
Exhibition /
Phillips X + ARCHEUS / POST-MODERN
Pierre Soulages: Une Lumière Infinie
On view 1 – 12 February
30 Berkeley Square, London, United Kingdom, W1J 6EX (map)
Learn more >
Recommended Reading
What Soulages Sounds Like: Hear the master through the music of composer Gérard Grisey >