Painting
Pierre Soulages, August 1, 1956
When Pierre Soulages was a kid, he was drawing black lines on white paper. A friend of his sister's asked what he was making. A snow scene, he said. With black ink. Years later, he thought he understood it: the black had made the white paper look brighter. Now look toward the lower left. Those little streaks of olive and gold. Against this much black, a little goes a long way. And those big black strokes overlap almost like boards in a pile. Little lines around the edges keep them from becoming one solid lump. Soulages even made tools from rubber meant for the bottoms of shoes. Spread the paint, drag it, scrape it back. This is called Painting. August 1, 1956. But stay with those little flashes of gold. Then, in 1979, he's in the studio, working on another painting. Black everywhere. Hours of work. He thinks it's going badly. Exhausted, he goes to sleep for an hour. Comes back. The painting hasn't changed. But what he sees has. Now he notices the light coming off the black. As he later put it: "I don't paint with black anymore. I paint with the light reflected off the black surface."
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