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The following interview was conducted with Pierre Soulages at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Manhattan during his last two exhibits at Robert Miller and Haim Chanin. The translation, transcription, and editing of this manuscript involved a considerable amount of attention. I am grateful to Mathilde Simian for accompanying me for the duration of the interview with the painter. Given that he prefers French to English, the answers to my questions generally came in French, and occasionally in English. Most often, it was half and half. This made the transcribing process difficult, to say the least. In the process of editing the manuscript, I often had to resort to my own translation—that I would compare with that of my colleague—in order to get the most accurate response. Finally, I must say that I am happy with the results. I believe the interview offers fresh insight into the work of one of France’s leading artists in the second half of the twentieth century. I am grateful to Pierre Soulages for his indefatigable patience as we proceeded through the details of his carefully reflected ideas.

Robert C. Morgan (Rail): Monsieur Soulages, it’s a pleasure to greet you in New York on the occasion of your two exhibitions. I have personally followed your work as a painter for many years, always with great admiration. I would like to begin by asking you how your career began?

Pierre Soulages: In 1947, I began to show my work with a group of painters in Paris that included Victor Vasarely, Gerard Schneider, and Nicolas de Staël. My first group show was in Germany in ’48 I showed with the Modern Masters and was, by far, the youngest of this group. The youngest after me was Schneider who would be today 109 years old if he were alive. My first exhibition in the United States was at Betty Parsons in 1949.

Rail: At that time, Paris was still the center of art world.

<p><strong>Soulages:</strong> It was a time where we were thinking of the world in  relation to Paris, whereas today  there are no more centers.</p>
      <p><strong>Rail:</strong> Well, yes, maybe then, but today we have this marketing that  is so aggressive today, in places like New York, London, <br>
        Berlin, maybe Tokyo.</p>
      <p><strong>Soulages:</strong> It depends on what you&amp;#8217;re talking about. Are you  talking about centers of creation or centers of business, of trade? If you&amp;#8217;re  talking about centers of trade, then New York is number one.</p>
<strong>Soulages:</strong> The question of the scale was not an important issue  for me&amp;#8212;and besides, the largest paintings on canvas that I know are 19th  century French paintings</p>
      <p><strong>Rail:</strong> There was a collection I once saw of work by the abstract  painters in France working in Paris at the end of  the War. They were all small&amp;#8212;what the Americans called easel-scale  painting&amp;#8212;with the exception of Georges Mathieu who was the only painter who  worked large scale. </p>

Soulages: In fact, a lot of the French painters from the post-War generation in France did easel size paintings in order to appease their dealers. A lot of dealers in Paris wanted Impressionist size and Impressionist style works. When I proposed to my gallerist a painting that was two meters wide, his response was: “I’ll come to see you when
you do something smaller.”

Rail: So there was pressure form the French gallerists?

Soulages: Exactly, and it was coming from all of them. So when I invited James Johnson Sweeney to my studio, he was looking at the work and said: “This one—you can be sure—will be bought by the trustees of the Guggenheim Museum.” And then he astonished me when he said that my dealer informed him that I only had small-scale paintings.

Rail: So let me ask you about the gesture in your work. It seems that the gesture is less important today in your work then it was maybe thirty or forty years ago—is that true?

Soulages: Even forty years ago, it was not the gesture that was important. It has always been a constriction on organization. It was the “gesture” for the sake of gesture itself.

Rail: Ok, you are making a clear distinction between your position and that of the American “action painters.”

Soulages: Yes. In the fifties, people were looking at my painting and thought I was not expressing myself enough. Too organized, too controlled—

Rail: This problem existed in France?

Soulages: In France, I’m deaf when people are talking about my paintings, so, I don’t know.

Rail: Because, for example in comparison to Schneider—

Soulages: Schneider was an Expressionist. What I was painting at that time was very different than his. My point of view was very different. I acknowledged the history and the paintings of my predecessors, especially The Incoherents of the late nineteenth century.

Rail: I know very little about them.

Soulages: This is not unusual, even in France. But what is important is to be a relativist, because the art history we are taught in school is really only a very small—

Rail: …part of civilization

Soulages: Exactly. So we know the first paintings, and then for hundreds of thousands of years, they went underground, all in dark-ish locations…into caves…where they were painting in black. You always wonder why black intervenes in art…and why it touches us so deeply.

Rail: It touches us so deeply because of what?

Soulages: Because for hundreds and hundreds of years men had gone underground using black and teaching in black. White is everywhere. So instead of painting white, they use black.

Rail: So it’s a mystery.

Soulages: Yes, and it continues to the present day.