• Pierre Soulages, who died in October 2022, is one of the most highly rated contemporary painters.
  • A CNRS video revealed last week that a "Toulouse" painting by the master of the Outrenoir was the subject of scientific research because of the "dripping" that appeared there.
  • Two other Soulages in the world have experienced the same phenomenon, which does not worry specialists. Launched on the chemical trail, but convinced that the causes are multiple, the team of researchers patiently tries to unravel the mystery of the "softening" paint.

It happened to Pierre Soulages, the master of the Outrenoir, to voluntarily trace drips on his canvases. But on three of his works, three on the 1,900 or so oils of the prolific artist, these flows of softened paint – visible to the naked eye for the good specialists of the master – are not of his direction. The three paintings were painted between November 1959 and March 1960. One is in the United States, another in Finland. The third, major, belongs to the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Abattoirs of Toulouse and has been the subject of much ink since the release on May 5 by the CNRS of a video on the scientific work carried out on these "alterations".

🎨🖌 To understand the causes of alterations in the works of Pierre Soulages, this report broadcast with @lemondefr takes you to the @lesabattoirs in Toulouse, follow a team of scientists launched in a major imaging campaign.

➡ https://t.co/AtlzQ9myB3 pic.twitter.com/7B5SuqVY6E

— CNRS 🌍 (@CNRS) May 5, 2023

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If for the general public, the phenomenon seems new, it is not for specialists. No, Soulages' paintings are not suddenly put to flow, just as those of Van Gogh did not blacken overnight. "It's a story like there are many in the history of art, it began more than ten years ago and Soulages [who died in October 2022] was perfectly aware," says Benoit Decron, the director of the museum dedicated to the master in Rodez, who would not want "a molehill to turn into a pyramid".

The Track of the Color Merchant

"Soulages, who was a great technician, worked with us on the Abattoirs canvas, it was great to have the artist with us," confirms Pauline Hélou de la Grandière, the independent restorer who works with CNRS specialists on the mystery of the "dripping" of the canvas. With great enthusiasm "but no concern for the work". "On the contrary. Conservation is a discipline in perpetual evolution and advancing in our research is a guarantee that the paintings will be better preserved and better restored, "explains this specialist of Soulages, author of a thesis called "Noirœs", for New interdisciplinary tools for the restoration of the works of Soulages. Especially since other paintings, other masters of the Second School of Paris and also painted at the end of the 1950s, conceal drips. They have been documented on Riopelle or Karel Appel for example.

Similarities that give a first clue to solve the mystery of the drips, "this unusual aging characteristic". The chemical one of the supplier, the merchant of colors, who frequented the galleries of All-Paris and far beyond. He was able to "change the formula of lead" he used, favoring a "saponification" giving decades later this appearance of touches of softer paint. "It was also a time when artists thickened their oil in the sun, on their balcony, in the polluted air of Paris," says Pauline Hélou de la Grandière. What is certain is that the phenomenon appears among Parisian artists and not among Americans. But since only a few paintings are affected, the restorer is convinced that "multiple factors are at play". Exhibition, transport, storage of paintings, the fascinating investigation, which requires unfolding as well in dusty archives as under the microscopes of laboratories, could still last for years

In the meantime, the scientific team has developed an "astronomical lamp" capable of revealing variations in the brilliance of canvases, and of "monitoring" that of slaughterhouses to prevent the evolution of dripping. In Rodez, Benoit Decron assures him, no visitor evokes the subject. No one scrutinizes the canvases differently or sticks their nose to them. And the exhibition event on Les derniers Soulages 2010-2022 is being prepared with confidence.

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