Soulages et l'art lointain chinois

Pierre Soulages has always been curious about art from elsewhere, about the prehistoric art of Altamira, Pech-Merle, the scenes of Lascaux, the paintings in the Grotte Chauvet, Romanesque and medieval art, and more broadly from the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania. He likes to contemplate these artistic productions, to meditate on them, to dialogue with them. For him, "true art has no borders or temporality".

The work of Pierre Soulages has already been associated with African art or examined in its artistic kinship with Cistercian aesthetics and architecture. But surprisingly, this work has hardly been considered in its relationship with ancient Chinese art.

In this publication, the author Bruno Duborgel has sought to examine the possible confrontation and dialogue between such and such aesthetic characteristics that have arisen in the work of Pierre Soulages and in the history of ancient Chinese painting, which corresponds mainly to so-called "scholarly" painting.

Wouldn't these two artistic universes have anything to say to each other about, for example, architectural space and the correspondence of elements in calligraphy? The relationship between black and white and the pairing of these two colours? The pairing of empty and full? Black as the original colour, and its chromatic palette? The 'mystery' of the world, the 'meaning' and the 'unknown'? All these questions are addressed in this text, complemented by a vast iconography.