Vibration of Space

HERON VIBRATION DE STAﾃ記 OF HARTUNG SPACE SOUL AGES

HERON VIBRATION DE STAËL OF HARTUNG SPACE SOUL AGES WADDING TON C US TOT

SPACE

AS

SUB JECT PATRICK HE RON AND THE F RE NCH A B S TR AC T PAINTERS É RIC DE CHAS SE Y

In spring 1956, as he was preparing a solo exhibition at the Redfern Gallery in London, Patrick Heron announced to Delia, his wife: ‘Here comes London’s first exhibition of tachiste paintings!’ 1 Referring to a Parisian art movement, he was stressing that he fully subscribed to an international trend in post-war abstract painting. This statement is more peculiar than it may sound, for he had just enthusiastically acknowledged New York’s arrival on the international scene, with Abstract Expressionism, and it is from that side of the Atlantic that one would rather have expected him to take inspiration. Indeed, in March 1956, while reporting on the Modern Art in the United States exhibition, which had been shown in January at the Tate Gallery, he had concluded that, in the light of the latest painting developments in the USA, ‘We shall now watch New York as eagerly as Paris for new developments’ 2. British critics welcomed the pictures presented in his next solo exhibition, in 1958, as a national (or local) incarnation of American Abstract Expressionism, Denys Sutton positing Mark Rothko as Heron’s mentor.3 His statement to his wife indicated that the situation was more complex. As he wanted to place his work – as well as that of his contemporaries and friends – within the current art world, which was the only way to break away from the prejudice that recurrently locked British art production in its insularity, Heron followed, in his 1950s paintings, a passionate dialogue with some of his continental contemporaries. This was by no means a debasement of his ambitions since, as Henri Matisse would say, to ‘avoi[d] the influence of others’ is ‘cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward [one]self ’ 4.

Only persistent prejudices prevented this dialogue from being taken seriously and its ramifications from being studied, be they nationalistic prejudices, which confine all creations strictly to the authors’ country of birth, or internationalist prejudices – which claim to judge everything with the view that, for each era, only one country dominates the whole spectrum of the arts (and with regards to the postwar era, this country is the United States since ‘New York stole the idea of Modern Art’ from Paris 5). It seems that the time has come to let go of these prejudices and to become fully aware of how work such as Heron’s can be better understood precisely if it is placed in relation to the contemporary practice of French painters such as Nicolas de Staël, Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages – without omitting his continued dialogue with American artists such as Rothko or Sam Francis (whom he visited in Paris in 1957), while somehow reinstating a balance that has long been disturbed.

In reality, the reference to Tachisme by Heron could not have pointed to a well-defined trend in French art in the 1950s. The word had been made popular

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in Paris by the critic Charles Estienne, who had borrowed it from Pierre Guéguen’s derogatory use in 1953 (in the context of a violent controversy against the former) and applied it to those artists who, ‘were starting again from scratch, not from geometry but from matter, from the very substance of their paint, taking the appearance of ‘taches’ [(spots, splashes)] if necessary’ 6. Initially, he was only referring to a few painters, such as Marcelle Loutchansky and Simon Hantaï for example, who claimed to integrate both non-figuration and the Surrealist legacy into their works and who exhibited together at the Salon d’octobre in 1953. However, the word soon took on a more vague character, thanks to the passionate discussions that animated the Paris art scene at the time searching for a term that could refer to new trends in abstract painting. In 1956, Estienne himself declared that ‘Tachisme is dead’ 7, but the use of the word had spread widely internationally, especially in England, where both its untranslatable nature and its brevity were used to describe any picture in which one could see non-figurative autonomous elements, free applications of pictorial material that weren’t bound by drawing 8. It also enabled the grouping under one label of artistic productions of all origins, since this approach was found amongst the French as well as the Americans and the British, although the word’s French origin made it clear that it referred to Paris’s current trend, which Heron was very familiar with.

In April 1950, Heron, in one of his weekly chronicles for The New Statesman and Nation, which he wrote fairly regularly from 1947 to 1953, whilst pursuing his career as a painter, he analysed the French art scene from the artists shown at a retrospective exhibition in London, while including some painters whose works were not represented 9. He mentioned de Staël in particular, whose, ‘quality of dryness is accentuated to such a pitch that his impasto becomes a gritty, grey cement, in which tone almost ousts colour entirely’, and compared him with Hartung and Soulages (who were not exhibited), who, ‘weave a light, calligraphic brushwork (in hard flat colours) into the severe grids of their abstract structure, being unconcerned with atmospheric tone’. He concluded, as he often would subsequently, that: ‘… for all these abstract painters Space itself is the subject. It must be presented without the intrusion of specific images of real objects, for that would dilute the essence of Space; would distract one, by associations, from the almost mystic contemplation of what is, after all, a prime element of the Universe.’

The work of these three French artists (two of whom of Russian and German origin), who were then widely acclaimed by Parisian and international critics, was shown several times in London during the 1950s, as part of group or solo exhibitions.

De Staël benefitted from a retrospective solo exhibition at the Matthiesen Gallery in February 1952, with thirty or so pictures, followed in 1956 by two large posthumous

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Nicolas de Staël in his studio at 7 rue Gauguet, Paris, Autumn 1951 by Serge Vandercam

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exhibitions at the Whitechapel Art Gallery and Arthur Tooth & Sons gallery.

Hartung had exhibited around thirty gouaches as early as January 1949 at the Hanover Gallery (together with Peter Foldes); his first solo exhibition in London, with some fifteen new paintings, took place in January 1953 at the Lefevre Gallery.

Soulages did not have a solo show in London until April–May 1955, although this was a large exhibition, at Gimpel Fils gallery, gathering around fifteen pictures painted from 1950, some of monumental dimensions. Aside from these London shows, Heron quickly acquired in-depth knowledge of these painters’ works, as well as that of post-war French artists in general, thanks to his several trips to Paris in the late 1940s and early 1950s, which included visits to exhibitions and studios (Soulages’s in particular). Whilst interested in the American art developments from 1954–1956 (first from word of mouth, then seeing it for himself ) and those of his fellow British artists, whom he commended in articles – albeit without refraining from being specifically critical – he remained convinced, as he had been since the early 1950s, that, ‘French painting is the best in the world: it still holds the centre of the stage. Indeed, it is the stage’ 10.

The Parisian artists’ view was far more insular, characterised by the conviction that Paris was indeed the centre of the art world and a disregard for anything that did not happen there, along with, although never expressed as such, a particularly entrenched prejudice towards British art (which, strangely, France has still not recovered from, as shown by the small number of exhibitions dedicated to British art by French art institutions to this day). During his first trip to London, in summer 1950, de Staël did write to his wife that: ‘… a big exhibition in London, when you know what London is, seems one of the most daring things you could imagine’ 11. But a few days earlier, he had said that: ‘It is the first city after Paris where one can really work, I think, but their painters are very lazy’ 12. There was no hint from these three French artists of any interest in the British painter who despite this was dedicating laudatory articles and comments to them (which the language barrier may explain), apart from Soulages. In 1953, he wrote a letter to Heron in which he expressed much consideration for his exact contemporary (the two artists were born only a few weeks apart): ‘I was very interested in the photo of your painting. … I found your painting very lively, very ‘painterly’ with true freedom and a real contact between that pictorial material, the profession and the painter. That, in my view, is the utmost mark of authenticity. And so I would be interested to see more of your paintings. After seeing this photo, I understand even better your interest in space and the importance that you give to it in your thoughts on painting. … I would very much like to meet with you and discuss our mutual interests. Are you planning on coming to Paris soon?

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Maybe I will come to London. … Sincerely yours and see you soon, I hope.’ 13.

Although Heron exhibited at the 1949 Salon de mai (as did the three French artists), then at La peinture britannique contemporaine, a small show on contemporary British painting, in 1957, his first solo exhibition in Paris, at Le Balcon des arts gallery, only took place in 1977.

As he would do with his own painting after moving away from explicitly figurative subjects, from 1956 (he would stress ‘the spatial interrelation of each and every touch (or stroke, or bar) of colour’ 14), Heron highlighted the spatial peculiarities in the three French artists’ works, based on the conviction that ‘ … for the non-figurative painters, space itself has become the subject’ 15. Indeed, he shared their reticence in regard to formalism, which limited the value of painting to the observance of technical rules imposed by the autonomous history of art, as much as to an effusive psychologism, that sought the works’ meaning in a metaphysically aspiring lyricism (of the type found, for example, in Georges Mathieu’s statements).

He stressed the structure of the surface with bold plastic elements, without limiting it to a two-dimensional principle: ‘There is an immensely powerful plastic awareness evident in both Soulages and de Staël. They are not only expressing a sense of space, sensuous even tangible space; they are expressing forms in space – even though we are not made conscious of the actual identity of these forms. … we sense their forms, their organized spatial volumes, as being something beyond the canvas, with its thick encrustations of pigment.’ 16 Heron could appreciate how very early on these two artists had used the cubist grid no longer as an underlying principle on which to hang objects, but as a shape in its own right, that is not distinct from the whole of the composition but that plays a role equivalent to that of all other elements in the canvas. This is what de Staël demonstrated, for instance, in ‘Harmonie grise, beige, taches rouges’ in 1948, displayed in London in 1952 with the title ‘Composition’ and shown again at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956: the explosive structure is made of black as well as coloured lines, in a complex entanglement of shapes and background. Soulages used the same approach, and Heron liked his creation of ‘a plastic image out of a linear one’ 17, when he moved away from the merely filled-in autonomous structure that dominates ‘Peinture 129,5 × 167,5 cm, 14 avril 1949’ (shown at the Salon de mai in 1949), to the more complex and more ambiguous solution that can be seen in ‘Peinture 100 × 65 cm, 1949’ (displayed at Gimpel Fils in 1950), which is very similar to ‘Peinture 10,6 × 8 cm, 1949’ (cat. no.16) where a black structure is placed both in front of and behind irregular, flat colours of ochre, grey, and black that surround it.

As he abandoned explicit figuration, Heron used similar compositions, as in ‘Green -

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Pink (Garden) : 1956’, entirely made of more or less narrow rectangles (some to the point of becoming mere lines, with paint straight out of the tube), creating a soft loose grid that plays with the white of the canvas.

I have described a work of de Staël as ‘explosive’, but the term is incorrect because the great majority of his paintings, precisely because of their spatial complexity, have a restricted aspect. The same can be said of Soulages, whose insistence on black as the best means to construct a picture and fill its surfaces stands out from the authoritative statement that can be found in the work of some of his contemporaries.

This applies to Hartung too, even if a Times critic described his works exhibited in London in 1953 as ‘basic doodles’ 18.

On the one hand, the work on light and an interest in chiaroscuro effects bring complexity to and slow down his compositions, as in ‘T 1955–38’ (cat. no.13) in 1955, where a double sweep over the surface of long vertical grey brushstrokes and a black graphic design is counterbalanced by the presence of two almost symmetrical spots, one red, one yellow, mixed with the grey on and under which they are placed. Heron also distinguished similar approaches to colour and light in Soulages’s and de Staël’s works, on which he wrote, ‘Inside the pictorial architecture … there are, so to speak, nests of more complicated form which are lodged within the all-over nonfigurative (sic) structure of the composition’ 19. In fact, all four artists have celebrated Rembrandt’s legacy at different times in their careers, and their works (especially that of Soulages between 1955–57, of Hartung at the beginning of the decade, or de Staël’s small semiabstract still lifes in 1954–55) may have occasionally reflected the dialogue they had with the printed œuvre of the Dutch painter.

On the other hand, the expressionist gesture is absent in their paintings, in spite of sometimes contradictory appearances, except perhaps in those ‘emptier, slicker pictures’ at the end of de Staël’s life that Heron violently criticised in the monographic article that he wrote on the artist in 1956. (In particular, he cites ‘the shocking picture of seagulls’ (‘Les Mouettes’, 1955) in which the seagulls are recognisable 20.) The all-over filling of the canvas in works of the late 1940s and early 1950s, which Heron liked so much, shows clearly that these are the result of a construction effort, using coordinated and well-thought out plastic elements. The monumental character 21 of the marks left by the tools Soulages used to cover the surface or deeply scratch it (in particular by scraping it from 1957–58) gives these paintings a noticeably determined expression, far from uncontrolled spontaneity which Heron praised, writing that ‘the speed of Soulages’s strokes was always measured’ 22. As for Hartung, we know now that his paintings were in fact ‘de-gestured’, as it were, by the distantiated process that brought them to life – what Annie Claustres has called a ‘workshop secret’ 23

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and which was, while the artist was still alive, only shared by Soulages. When the artist went back to painting after the war, which had left him partially disabled, he recreated his 1930s watercolours on a larger scale. Then, from 1948, he produced hundreds of pastels, creating a stock of compositions that he transferred, sometimes years later, by squaring on to canvases the backgrounds of which were prepared by his assistants who would leave the spaces to be filled in either as spare parts or as vague outlines, with calculated gestures so they would be identical to the initial sketch. This is what gives them this aspect of systematic execution, of various separate operations spatially stacked in the composition, for example, in pictures of the late 1940s and early 1950s, from the flat background to the rectangular colourwashes, to dark structures and lively spots of colours (a yellow spot in the case of ‘T 1949-4’ (cat. no.12), for instance).

We see the same thing with Heron, in a picture such as ‘Vertical Strokes : 1956’ (cat. no.2). Despite being executed with a very liquid paint, scattering projected drops over the surface, while the suddenness with which the artist lifted his brush at the end of each application has left, here and there, a feathering of bright colours; the composition has a very deliberate feel. On the background colourwashes, of various luminous colours, colourful rectangles are placed, one next to the other so as to weave a loose mesh, creating a balanced rhythm: the small areas of blank canvas that remain at lower right show that this filling-in was carried out methodically, starting from the top-left corner before achieving a harmonious balance.

Yet, these artists did not want to stay within the limits of a predefined balance, which would have been far too restrictive: what mattered most to them was that the pictorial space they created be as alive as the one in which they – and we – move(d).

This is true even when, as with Soulages and Hartung, the source of their paintings can never be found in an object they could have seen or even a sensation that they might have wanted to give an equivalent of (this is not the case, of course, with de Staël or Heron) 24. As Soulages explained in 1954: ‘Space is a dynamic of the imagination; there is no sense in impoverishing poetry, I mean painting, by denying it. Such a denial has sometimes been put down to practical, functional reasons: the respect of the wall, for example … But I think that a painting that is truly experienced, with no arbitrary constraint, no artificial bias, takes our own space into account, precisely by creating one’s own.’ 25.

De Staël and Heron’s conceptions of pictorial space shared the same basis in that they had been inspired by their time spent with Braque (while they never showed much interest in Picasso). When he visited London in July 1950, de Staël, who had met Braque as early as 1944, took the opportunity to go to Varengeville to visit the

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Patrick Heron, Vertical : January 1956, 1956 oil paint on hardboard, 96 × 48 in / 243.8 × 121.9 cm, Tate Collection

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one whom he considered to be ‘the greatest of today’s world painters’ 26. Heron wrote about Braque in 1946 at the time of the latter’s London exhibition; he visited his studio in Paris in 1949 and described him as ‘the greatest figure in painting today’ 27; he would often write about Braque’s work later on. One of the distinctions of Braque’s painting is that it stresses the possibility of creating in painting – i.e. on a two-dimensional plane – not just a ‘visual space’ but also a ‘tactile space’, or even a ‘manual space’, to quote the classification that he devised in the early 1950s 28.

Heron noticed the almost contradictory qualities of this conception of space, in that space comes to the viewer as much as it invites the viewer in: ‘The thin washes settle into the gritty surface as a matt stain: and a stony opacity becomes the vision’ 29.

He would later use the same vocabulary about pictures based on a module of paint applied in thick squares, painted by de Staël in 1951–52. A dozen such works were exhibited at the Matthiesen Gallery in 1952, mostly small canvases, abstract landscapes or still lifes with bottles or apples, but also the huge ‘Les Toits’ (1951–52, Centre Pompidou / Musée national d’art moderne), which was then entitled ‘Paysage’ and which de Staël refers to as ‘Ciel de Dieppe’ in a letter to Denys Sutton in May 1952 30.

In 1956, Heron highlighted de Staël’s use of ‘a mound of thick and gritty pigment forced down on to the canvas with the blade of that sort of wedge-shaped ‘scraper’ knife which decorators use’ 31.

One could say that the few pictures that Heron produced in summer 1952, where explicit figuration temporarily disappeared, are literally de Staël on Braques ones; from as early as the late 1940s, he was already having a strong pictorial dialogue with the second painter. Hence ‘Square Leaves (Abstract) : July 1952’ (cat. no.1) starts from an interior view similar to that in ‘Femme à sa toilette’ by Braque (1942), which he had particularly admired in 1946 and from which he copied the still life with jug under the window (removing the figure on the left in Braque’s painting). He placed over it (no longer using the French artist’s grid of ‘lines’ which had been a productive source of inspiration for his interior pictures in 1950–51 32) thick rectangles of flat colour copied directly from de Staël’s paintings, to which he added a dynamic, diagonal rhythm of his own (particularly visible in the red assonances). The outline of the jug borrowed from Braque, which had been the main topic of a lecture he gave on the artist in 1951 33, is covered with a lump of white paint applied with a knife – a technique copied from de Staël’s work.

Heron also used the still life model typical of Braque’s 1940s works (here a bunch of flowers) in a picture produced in August, and covered it with a mosaic of large impasto squares, applied with a palette-knife, that evokes ‘Bouteilles, harmonie en rose et bleu’ (1952) by de Staël, shown at the Matthiesen Gallery. He simply

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reversed the process to give his composition a lateral movement: in de Staël, the brightly coloured expanses of the objects are placed on a background made of shapeless spots, whereas in Heron dark objects disappear almost completely behind a mosaic of pale rectangles.

His feeling of having moved away from figuration – to which he returned very soon – was not dissimilar to de Staël’s, who also scorned the distinction between figuration and abstraction by giving figurative titles to many of his pictures exhibited at the Matthiesen Gallery, for the first time in a long while, alongside others that he simply called Compositions. The words used by Denys Sutton in the exhibition catalogue – ‘De Staël has established in these works his belief in a tangible world informed by light. He has created ‘views’ that exist in the haze of the half light which occurs when reality and dream intermingle’ 34 – could just as well be applied to the works by Heron that derive from them.

Heron fully returned to abstraction with ‘Vertical : January 1956’ (Tate Gallery), which Mel Gooding described as being the ‘first painting of this period that is totally assured in its assumption of a non-figurative manner’ 35. This change was prompted by Heron’s visit to Soulages’s solo exhibition in London. Thus, in ‘Winter Harbour : 1955’, over a seaside landscape is placed a structure made of a thick black, white and grey disjointed grid, directly inspired by Soulages, as stated by the artist in 1957 about his first Garden Paintings 36. One could think that ‘Peinture 81 × 59 cm, 15 octobre 1954’, in particular, with its structure in black, dark brown and white on a blue background, may have inspired this solution, from which he removed the figurative reference, in ‘White Vertical : May 1956 (Black)’ (cat. no.4) or in ‘Green on Blacks : 1956’ (cat. no.3), employing a palette of his own, based respectively on the shades of white on a black background and a clash between black and bright colours (a background of colourful colourwashes with bright green highlights over a network of black vertical bars).

Soulages ceaselessly claimed to reject any hint of an observed view in his pictures. In 1953, however, in his most accessible public statement yet, he formulated this rejection in more ambiguous terms, which may have comforted Heron: ‘If a painter introduces recognisable connections with the world through figuration, nonfigurative painting introduces other connections; for the viewer as for the painter, the world is no longer observed but experienced, it has entered their experience of it. This experience itself can be felt via meanings, which, through it, form and disintegrate on the canvas. Hence the painting that does without representation is surrounded by the world and owes it its meaning.’ 37 Even if Heron claimed to have found in his 1956–57 pictures ‘a sense of freedom quite denied me while I still had to keep half an eye on a ‘subject’’ 38, he nevertheless

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Hans Hartung, Sans titre (076-128), 1955 Chinese ink on paper, 7 ½ × 4 ¾ in / 19 ×12 cm, Collection Fondation Hartung-Bergman

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maintained, although not so much through imitation as through emulation, a certain relationship with the sensations experienced in nature, especially those he experienced by the sea in St Ives. Here, there is another direct connection with de Staël, as both artists visited the same landscapes in the south of France and took inspiration from them. Heron stayed in Ménerbes and Antibes during winter 1948–49; de Staël spent several summers there from 1950 (just as he returned from London 39) before moving to Antibes in the last year of his life (where he took his own life in 1955). There is even a connection with Hartung, who spent all his summers from 1954 to 1958 by the Mediterranean, saying: ‘I took many photos of stones there, but mostly I did hundreds upon hundreds of Indian ink drawings. They had a strong influence on my painting at the time, in which large black marks appear on backgrounds of a very light cold green or red lead or other colours’ 40.

After the last painting of his first series of early Garden Paintings, however, Heron put aside any allusion to landscape with his 1957–1958 series of horizontal or vertical pictures entitled Stripe Paintings. He himself has credited American Abstract Expressionists with having, ‘finally insisted, with a vehemence that has since converted almost everyone everywhere, that the total painting itself is the only image involved in a painting’ 41. And critics have endlessly compared his pictures of the second half of the 1950s to Rothko’s works, which he had the opportunity to admire in 1956, and again in 1958.42 Yet, these paintings follow a narrow dialogue with Soulages’s both constructed and open abstractions; Hartung’s paintings (as can be seen in transition paintings such as ‘Lemon, Ochre, Black : January 1957’ (cat. no.5), where the presence of parallel vertical stripes on the left-hand side of the composition, scraped into the canvas, finds an equivalent in Hartung’s contemporary scratches); and even the de Staël pictures of 1952 shown at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956, ‘Ciel à Honfleur’ and ‘Le Lavandou’ (1952, Centre Pompidou / Musée national d’art moderne), which consist of almost parallel bars of varying thickness. (Heron’s method may have led to its systematisation, made possible thanks to his liberation from his connection to nature.)

They present that sense of space and colour most unique to the British painter with a special affinity with de Staël (in fact, as early as 1959, he returned to compositions of colourful rectangular shapes that hang over an atmospheric background, that evoke both Rothko’s Multiforms and the works produced by the French artist at the end of his life). In 1951, the latter explained his ambition by saying: ‘I want to create a harmony. To this end, the material I use is paint’ 43. This is not dissimilar to Heron’s own explanation, in 1955: ‘Art is a revelation to be contemplated – not an exhortation to be acted upon’ 44.

Translated from the original French, pp.101–115 É RIC DE C HAS SE Y 15

NOTES

12

1

13

Patrick Heron, recorded from a conversation in 1993 with Mel Gooding, GOODING 1994, p.97 2 Patrick Heron, ‘The Americans at the Tate Gallery’, Arts (New York), March 1956, HERON 1998, p.104. Mel Gooding has highlighted the extent to which Heron’s sentiments towards American Abstract Expressionism were not, however, without any reluctance – the meaning is unclear here (GOODING 1994, pp.94–127) 3 Denys Sutton, review of Heron’s exhibition at the Redfern Gallery, Financial Times, 4 March 1958, quoted in GOODING 1994, p.137 4 MATISSE 1907, p.56 5 See GUILBAUT 1983, CHASSEY-R AMOND 2008 and CHASSEY 2014 6 ESTIENNE 1954, p.2 7 ESTIENNE 1956, p.1 8 For the usage of the term referring to a wide trend in British painting in the mid-1950s, see GASKIN 2001, pp.17–54. Unfortunately, Fiona Gaskin does not make a thorough study of the use of the term by English critics, but simply includes, retrospectively, all the trends displayed at the Metavisual, Tachiste, Abstract exhibition in 1957 at the Redfern Gallery in London 9 Patrick Heron, ‘The French Contemporaries’, The

New Statesman and Nation (London), 29 April 1950, p.484. My thanks go to Jean-Luc Uro, from Fondation Hartung-Bergman, for providing me with a copy of this article. A few months earlier, Heron had drawn a parallel between British and French painters, with a sombre statement: ‘There is still little more than a handful of British painters whose works we could confidently exhibit abroad.’ (‘English and French in 1950’, The New Statesman and Nation (London), 7 January 1950, p.9) 10 Patrick Heron, ‘The Power of Paris’, The New Statesman and Nation (London), 19 July 1952, HERON 1955, p.265 11 Nicolas de Staël, letter from London to Françoise de Staël, 3 August 1950, STAËL 2014, p.215

14

15

16 17 18

19

20 21

22 23 24

25

Nicolas de Staël, letter from London to Françoise de Staël, 31 July 1950, STAËL 2014, p.211 Pierre Soulages, letter from Paris to Patrick Heron, 3 November 1953, partly quoted, WILSON 2001, p.10, n.10. I am indebted to Jessica Ramsay’s responsiveness for being able to see the whole letter Patrick Heron, ‘To me…’, Statements – A Review of British Abstract Art in 1956 (exh. cat.), 1957, HERON 1998, p.121 Patrick Heron, ‘Space in Painting and Architecture’, Architects’ Year Book 5 (London), January 1953, HERON 1998, p.73 Ibid., p.77 Patrick Heron, letter to Clement Greenberg, 23 May 1955, WILSON 2001, p.10 An., ‘Opposing Forces in Art: The Lure of Abstraction’, The Times (London), 30 January 1953, CLAUSTRES 2005, p.80 Patrick Heron, ‘American Artists from the E. J. Power Collection / Roger Hilton’, Arts (New York), May 1958, HERON 1998, p.150 Patrick Heron, ‘Nicolas de Staël’, The Listener (London), 3 May 1956, HERON 1998, pp.109–110 Even when dimensions are limited, scale is almost always monumental in Soulages’s work: there lies his success Patrick Heron, ‘London’, Arts (New York), October 1958, p.21 CLAUSTRES 2005, pp.57–68 It must be pointed out, however, that, unlike Soulages, Hartung indicated a figurative starting point, albeit remote in time, regarding his abstract compositions, writing about his first paintings in the 1920s: ‘I liked my taches. I liked the fact that they were enough to create a face, a body, a landscape. These taches that soon would claim their autonomy and full freedom. … what joy then to let them play amongst themselves, acquire their own expressivity, their own relationships, their dynamism, without being subject to reality!’

(HARTUNG 1976, p.170) Pierre Soulages, ‘L’espace dans la peinture’, Le Disque vert (Paris), January–February 1954, ENCREVE 1994, p.290

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26

Nicolas de Staël, letter to Mrs Guillou from Paris, end of February 1946, STAËL 2014, p.117 27 Patrick Heron, ‘Paris: Summer 1949’, The New Statesman and Nation (London), 16 July 1949, HERON 1998, p.37 28 BRAQUE 1952, p.34. Please see CHASSEY’S research on Braque’s tactile space, CHASSEY 1999, pp.31–46 29 Patrick Heron, ‘Braque’, The New English Weekly (London), 4 July 1946, HERON 1998, p.13 30 See Jean-Paul Ameline, ‘Funambulisme entre figuration et abstraction: Nicolas de Staël face à la critique’, critique on the sequence of titles for Les Toits, STAËL 2003, p.18 31 Patrick Heron, ‘Nicolas de Staël’, op. cit. (n.20), p.110 32 Heron stresses ‘the function of lines’ in Patrick Heron, ‘Braque’, op. cit. (n.29), p.16 33 Patrick Heron, ‘The Changing Jug’, The Listener (London), 2 January 1951, BBC Third Programme broadcast, HERON 1998, pp.54–59 34 STAËL 1952, p.4 35 GOODING 1994, p.104 36 Patrick Heron, statement of 1957, WILSON 2001, pp.10–11 37 SOULAGES 1953, p.17 38 Patrick Heron, ‘To me…’, op. cit.

39 De Staël paints Bateau gris in Ménerbes, 1953–54 40 HARTUNG 1976, p.206. ‘T 1956-23’ is a good example of the works the artist is talking about 41 Patrick Heron, ‘American Artists from the E. J. Power Collection / Roger Hilton’, op. cit. (n.19), p.151 42 See GOODING 1994, pp.121–127, 137–150 43 Nicolas de Staël, response to a questionnaire

by MoMA in New York, March–April 1951, quoted in Anna Hiddleston and Anne Malherbe, ‘Chronologie’, STAËL 2003, p.92 44 Patrick Heron, ‘Art Is Autonomous’, The Twentieth Century, September 1955, HERON 1998, p.95

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RE F E RE NCE S BRAQUE 1952: Georges Braque, Le Jour et la Nuit. Cahiers de Georges Braque 1917–1952, Gallimard, Paris, 1952 CHASSEY 1999: Éric de Chassey, ‘Braque et la nature morte: tactilité littérale et virtuelle’, in Françoise Cohen (ed.), Georges Braque : L’espace (exh. cat.), Musée Malraux, Le Havre / Adam Biro, Paris, 1999 CHASSEY 2014: Éric de Chassey, ‘Abstraction Sans Frontières’, Tate Magazine (London), no.31, summer 2014 CHASSEY-R AMOND 2008: Éric de Chassey and Sylvie Ramond (eds.), Repartir à zéro, comme si la peinture n’avait jamais existé, 1945–1949 (exh. cat.), Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon / Hazan, Paris, 2008 CLAUSTRES 2005: Annie Claustres, Hans Hartung. Les aléas d’une réception, Les presses du réel, Dijon, 2005 ENCREVE 1994: Pierre Encrevé, Soulages. L’œuvre complet. Peintures. I. 1946–1959, Seuil, Paris, 1994 ESTIENNE 1954: Charles Estienne, ‘Une révolution : Le tachisme’, Combat-Art (Paris), no.4, 1 March 1954 ESTIENNE 1956: Charles Estienne, ‘Le combat et ses combattants’, Combat-Art (Paris), no.33, 3 December 1956 ESTIENNE 2001: Fiona Gaskin, ‘British Tachisme in the post-war period, 1946–1957’, in Margaret Garlake (ed.), Artists and Patrons in Post-War Britain, Ashgate Publishing (Courtauld Research Papers No.2), 2001 GOODING 1994: Mel Gooding, Patrick Heron, Phaidon, London, 2014 [1994]

SPACE A S SUB JEC T PATRICK HE RON AND THE F RE NCH AB S TR AC T PAINTERS 18

GUILBAUT 1983: Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War, trans. by Arthur Goldhammer, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1983 [Comment New York vola l’idée d’art moderne, Nîmes, Jacqueline Chambon, 1991] HARTUNG 1976: Hans Hartung, Autoportrait, Grasset, Paris, 1976, quoted in Franz-W. Kaiser, Anne Pontégnie and Vincente Todoli, Hartung × 3, Expressions contemporaines, Angers, 2003 HERON 1955: Patrick Heron, The Changing Forms of Art, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1955 HERON 1998: Patrick Heron, Painter as Critic. Patrick Heron: Selected Writings, Mel Gooding (ed.), Tate Publishing, London, 1998 [2001] MATISSE 1907: Henri Matisse, in Guillaume Apollinaire, ‘Henri Matisse’, L a Phalange, no.2, 15–18 December 1907, quoted in Écrits et propos sur l’art, Dominique Fourcade (ed.), Hermann, Paris, 1972 SOULAGES 1953: Pierre Soulages, ‘Écrits d’artiste : Pierre Soulages’, Cimaise (Paris), no.1, November 1953 STAËL 1952: Denys Sutton, introduction, Nicolas de Staël (exh. cat.), Matthiesen Gallery, London, 1952 STAËL 2003: Jean-Paul Ameline (ed.), Nicolas de Staël (exh. cat.), Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2003 STAËL 2014: Nicolas de Staël, Lettres. 1926–1955, Germain Viatte (ed.), Le Bruit du temps, Paris, 2014 WILSON 2001: Andrew Wilson, ‘Foreword: A Transparent Gateway’, Patrick Heron: E arly and Late Garden Paintings (exh. cat.), Tate Publishing, St Ives, 2001

É RIC DE C HAS SE Y 19

3 nov. 53

Dear Patrick Heron, Thank you for your letter and for the article which you were kind enough to send me.

I have only just found your letter on my return from Italy, which accounts for my late reply – I hope you will excuse me.

I was very interested in the photo of your painting. I would love to be able to see the colours of course, but I was immediately struck by the tension in your treatment of space between the upper and lower halves of the painting. These two areas are reciprocally engaged in transforming each other and the spatial qualities of both the upper and lower parts are transformed in a very interesting way through their presence side by side in the same painting. More generally, and at first glance, I found your painting very lively, very ‘painterly’ with true freedom and a real contact between that pictorial material, the profession and the painter. That, in my view, is the utmost mark of authenticity. And so I would be interested to see more of your paintings. After seeing this photo, I understand even better your interest in space and the importance that you give to it in your thoughts on painting. By the way, I agree with you on this point entirely, which makes what you write about my painting all the more meaningful.

I would very much like to meet with you and discuss our mutual interests. Are you planning on coming to Paris soon? Maybe I will come to London.

In the meantime I am preparing one or two texts with some of my reflections on space, which I will send to you within a week. I will attach a couple of photos – and, if it’s not too late, you can choose which to reproduce in your book.

Sincerely yours and see you soon, I hope, Soulages

É RIC DE C HAS SE Y 23

PATRICK HERON

1 S quare Leaves (Abstract) : July 1952 1952 oil on canvas 30 × 20 in / 76.2 × 50.8 cm

2 Vertical Strokes : 1956 1956 oil on canvas 48 × 36 in / 121.9 × 91.4 cm

3 Green

on Blacks : 1956 1956 oil on canvas 36 × 18 in / 91.4 × 45.7 cm

4 White

Vertical : May 1956 (Black) 1956 oil on canvas 36 × 17 ¾ in / 91.4 × 45 cm

5 L emon, Ochre, Black : January 1957 1957 oil on canvas 20 × 16 in / 50.8 × 40.6 cm

6 Ochre

Skies : April 1957 1957 oil on canvas 48 ⅛ × 22 in / 122.2 × 56 cm

7 Yellow

Painting with Orange and Brown-ochre Squares : June-October 1959 1959 oil on canvas 60 × 48 ¼ in / 152.5 × 122.5 cm

SPACE

IN

PAINTING

AND

ARCHITECTURE PATRICK HE RON

Patrick Heron by Ida Karr, 1961

SPACE IN PAINTING AND ARCHI TEC TURE 42

What time is to the musical composer, space is to the painter – and I should have thought, to the architect too. Musical rhythm consists of intervals marked off and experienced in time: time is the medium. Pictorial rhythm consists of intervals registered in space: space is the medium. Until painting became non-figurative, the spatial configuration which the painter registered upon his canvas consisted of forms that could be read as illusionistic references to real objects; objects, that is, that were external to the picture. In achieving the precise spatial pattern, or configuration, which he desired the painter had the illusion that he was pushing or pulling about real people, furniture, buildings or trees, until he got them into the position, or ‘composition’, he found most pleasing and significant. With his mind focussed upon these objects – or upon their forms – the painter may not have been consciously aware of their spatial significance; of their meaning as planes or surfaces which registered space. But he was always unconsciously aware of it. Indeed the spatial connotation of the forms depicted in a representational painting is a prime source of its style or character: every important painter has created a fresh version of pictorial space.

The same objects may be represented in the works of different masters: but their spacial relationships – to each other: to the picture-surface: to the frame – are always characteristic of, even unique to, their author.

If it is possible to argue – as I believe – that a major aim of the painter is, and has always been, to organise space in a new and distinctive manner, we can say that the advent of non-figurative art has marked one important change in creative procedure. If the organisation of space was an unconscious activity on the part of the representational painter – who was thinking of a subject while he organized his forms – in the case of the non­-figurative painter it has become a conscious aim. For the non-figurative painter, space is the main object of manipulation: it is compressed or attenuated, massed or drawn out, according to the picture’s needs. Thus, for the non-figurative painters, space itself has become the subject. It must be presented without the intrusion of specific images of real objects, for that would dilute the essence of space; would distract one, by associations, from the almost mystic contemplation of what is, after all, a prime element of the Universe.

These words apply more, in my view, to post-war than pre-war non-figurative painting, for reasons which I hope to explain later on. Before the war non-figurative painting was a movement from which the French were largely excluded. The French had produced Cubism­– which is abstract but not non-figurative. Cubism seems to have absorbed all those energies which, elsewhere, went into the purely non-figurative idioms, of Constructivism and so on. But in 1945 pure non-figuration began to prevail in Paris, virtually for the first time. By 1950 it had become the key to what is pretty

PATRICK HE RON 43

certainly the most important movement in French art since Cubism was founded.

At first I mistook this new movement (which in fact comprises at least four distinct and separate groups, or categories, differing one from the next as clearly as impressionism differed from expressionism) for a final futile gesture from the cooling corpse of modern French art. I thought it represented nothing more than the arid recapitulation of themes familiar in pre­-war non-figurative European art. I was wrong.

The painting of Singier, Manessier or Estève was not merely the titivating decorative concoction which might result from simply restating the old non-figurative themes in paint which, instead of approaching the smooth, antiseptic banality of the bathroom wall (a typical pre-war quality), had much in common with Bonnard or the great impressionists. Nor was the stronger, harsher, but nonetheless rich and expressive impasto of de Staël or Soulages the result of an arbitrary marriage between an almost expressionist ‘texture’ and, say, Mondrian. These artists of post-war fame stand at the beginning of a new development in painting which may dominate the next decade or two. But before I describe the paintings of the most impressive artists in this new school of post-war nonfiguration, English as well as French, and define the main differences between this and pre-war non-figurative painting, I should like, for a moment, to turn to architecture.

Lewis Mumford, in a recent article in The New Yorker in which he was comparing Lever House and the new United Nations Secretariat building, wrote as follows: Lever House lacks the massive sculptural qualities of Wright’s inspired masonry (The Larkin Building); it is, rather, in its proud transparency, ‘a construction in space’. It says all that can be said, delicately, accurately, elegantly, with surfaces of glass, with ribs of steel, with an occasional contrast in slabs of marble or in beds of growing plants, but its special virtues are most visible, not in the envelope, but in the interior that this envelope brings into existence, in which light and space and colour constitute both form and decoration.

It is in these last phrases about ‘the interior’ which ‘the envelope brings into existence’ that Mr. Mumford touches on what seems to me to be the most important development in architecture in recent times – the development of a new, and unique, spacial sense. I am an amateur as a critic of architecture. I cannot pretend to trace this development. But, looking recently at photographs of buildings by Mies van der Rohe I was struck, in the first place, by an austerity which amounted to harshness, by an openness and simplicity which amounted to bleakness. It seemed to me that every ‘architectural’ feature – every solid wall, or screen, vertical or horizontal – was,

SPACE IN PAINTING AND ARCHI TEC TURE 44

as it were, too self-effacing, to the point of attempting to become non-existent in terms of an actual plastic solid and remaining merely as a defining boundary in the mind of the spectator. Detail became, very early on in Mies van der Rohe, nothing more specifically articulated than the textural quality of the materials used – the tiny bubbles of concrete, the vein of marble, the gleam of glass. What, I asked myself, was the aesthetic significance of these perfectly proportioned but self-effacing neutral screens, which interpenetrated, overlapped or, standing free, merely echoed one another in their harmonious definition of space? I came to the conclusion that their bare rectilinear interpenetration, their faceless anonymity as ‘walls’, their imageless austerity, was due to one thing: they were self-effacing because they defined not a solid framework – whose separate formal members must possess that quality of image and personality which they clearly denied – but a configuration of space. And I say of space, not in space: for space itself was the medium. Space was the entity – the visible ‘building’ was merely its visible boundaries. Space itself was the harmonious organic form which the architect articulated by means of his screens, ceilings and floors.

Modelling this invisible image of spatial volumes Mies van der Rohe was constrained to render its frontiers – at least – visible. And this he therefore accomplished with the minimum of visible material. The progression in his career which is most notable is surely this progression from visible to invisible. The inescapably solid screens remained solid: but they became increasingly transparent; until in the Farnsworth house the walls were all glass.

Other great modern architects have become increasingly aware of space in this way – as if space was a block of stone and the architect a sculptor. But Mies van der Rohe seems to me either to be more attached to the spatial element itself; or to have less interest in materials for their own intrinsic quality. Wright’s spatial structure is as adventurous as Mies’s; but Wright loves the inherent personality of his solids; the glassiness of glass, the sandy sun­burnt density of stone, the pale water-flowing rhythm of wood grain, for instance. Where Mies spreads these materials thin and taut, to define, simply; Wright spreads them thick, lavishly, adorning the spatial definitions which he is also communicating to us at the same instant.

There is almost a parallel contrast in sculpture. Consider Naum Gabo’s ‘constructions in space’ (and is he not the originator of this phrase?) beside those of Reg Butler. Gabo’s airy, open, transparent constructions in perspex pursue the definition of a concept in terms of space and space only. He would like to project his image directly into the spectator’s mind without having to make any concessions to a physical material of any sort. He wishes the material out of the way: the mental concept is all that matters; so he chooses the most neutral, most nearly non-existent

PATRICK HE RON 45

material to hand – an almost invisible plastic, as devoid of quality or personality as any material could be. The sensuous pleasure in the means, in the medium used, which other artists so much enjoy, Gabo eschews. Reg Butler, on the other hand, traces his cage-like figures in iron and steel with the utmost enjoyment in the process: the molten steel drips, is hammered, ground away, added to by welding, sliced about with an oxygen torch – and so on, until the metal itself bears the imprint of the sculptor’s will, registers his personal touch as intimately as clay or wax does in responding to the pressure of the modeller’s thumb. Butler is not concerned merely to project an idea, merely to draw an image in space. He is also preoccupied with the potential expressiveness of iron and steel: his aim is, also, to make iron flower; to make it come alive. There is a danger that the modern architect will follow Gabo rather than Butler in this particular respect. Certainly space must be considered almost as if it were a living, organic substance, whose special nature must be respected. But it is possible at the same time to use materials – for the purpose of defining space – which possess more rather than less intrinsic personality. A spatial concept is not inescapably bound up with colourless, transparent, synthetic substances like perspex. Good building should reconcile the nature of space and the nature of solid material.

This question of the nature of material (and ‘respect for material’, though a commonly accepted principle now, is nonetheless one of permanent importance) brings me back to the contemporary non-figurative painters I want to discuss because, if there is one thing more than another which distinguishes post-war from prewar non-figurative painting it is that the post-­war painters use oil paint as it should always be used, making the most of its rich textures, while the pre-war non-figurative artists denied this, using paint as if it were coloured glass or smooth enamel. If such a statement as this seems to betray a personal bias on my part – a mere preference for thick rather than thin paint – I will put it another way. Post-war non-figurative painting makes its point through the medium of a free movement of brush or knife: this is the essential quality of painterly ‘scribble’ common to Rembrandt and Velasquez; Michelangelo and Rubens; Titian and Piero della Francesca; Cézanne and Delacroix. Pre-war non-figurative painting postulated such a degree of impersonal detachment as necessarily involved an inhibited, constricted, unrhythmic brushwork – which appeared almost to deny its own nature as brushwork. The smooth, cold, clear, hard surfaces of Mondrian, Nicholson, Hélion, Tauber-Arp, Miró and Kandinsky (these last two cannot of course qualify as non-figurative painters; but they subscribed to the common aesthetic of the period, which is what I am here defining) were, moreover, a factor operating against the realisation of a sense of space. All these artists did their best to eliminate from their surfaces what I will call the vibration of space.

SPACE IN PAINTING AND ARCHI TEC TURE 46

A surface of mechanical smoothness suppresses the illusionistic power of a painted surface. Constructivist painting aimed at these two qualities: smoothness, and the absence of any illusionistic reference to any reality other than the picture-surface itself. The very criterion of excellence for such painters as Nicholson or Mondrian was precisely that the representational function in painting should be so completely suppressed that a picture could only be contemplated as an end in itself, an object in its own right.

This ideal reduces painting to the condition of bas-relief – a logic Nicholson followed out. It denies however, the most basic function of pictorial art – which is its ability to represent objects other than itself: the illusionistic operation of any image recorded on a flat surface is painting’s inherent magic, its unique power. This quality of illusion – of the sensation of a spatial configuration existing behind (and occasionally in front of ) the surface of the picture is inseparable from the sense of space (itself illusory, in painting: though in sculpture it is actual). The merest scratch of a line on a white surface induces sensations of recession – of an imagined form advancing out of or falling back through the place where the marked white surface stands. Thus space is the ‘medium’ in terms of which any pictorial configuration has its being.

A further very important distinction, therefore, between, say, Mondrian and Soulages is that the post-war painter acknowledges this spatial necessity in painting whereas the pre-war artist attempted to deny it. There is an immensely powerful plastic awareness evident in both Soulages and de Staël. They are not only expressing a sense of space, sensuous even tangible space; they are expressing forms in space – even though we are not made conscious of the actual identity of these forms. They have all along con­formed to the principle that painting is illusionistic, representational: we sense their forms, their organised spatial volumes, as being something beyond the canvas, with its thick encrustations of pigment. Possibly the rea­son why this new French non-figuration, now it has arrived, is so much more convincing, as painting, than the earlier idiom I’ve discussed, is that these painters have been unable to forget the lessons of Cubism. Cubism is the exact contrary of that idealistic artform – Constructivism – which divorces vision from means: the example of Gabo’s barely visible designs has been given; but Mondrian cannot be said to have loved paint. Cubism, in its love of the concrete, extols paint, canvas, paper, chalk as well as wine­glasses, tables and guitars. This sensuous love of the material is of paramount importance to Soulages, de Staël and – over here in England – to William Scott, Alan Davie, Roger Hilton, Peter Lanyon (whom I include here despite his figurative images – they are oblique in their references to his experience of natural objects) Victor Pasmore and Terry Frost.

PATRICK HE RON 47

We might call the present moment the period of ‘thick’ – as opposed to ‘thin’ – non-figuration. Not only do these contemporaries use thicker paint, arriving at that quality of grain in their surfaces which produces that ‘vibra­tion of space’ (which is also a vibration of light, of course), than the pre-war Constructivists: but their works have a stronger rhythm, a weightier mass, a more insistent pulse. Where the pre-war painters were geometric, sharp, over-tidy, the post-war are organic, blunt, ragged.

Pre-war non-figuration was dominated by mathematical precision in execution and a highly conceptual mode of invention. Post-war derives its much freer configurations from sensory sources and states them in terms which assail us by their sensuous vigour and their intuitive free strength; perceptual rather than conceptual in their mode of expression. A painting in black and white by Mondrian is a sign which may be read: the excitement is in the meaning and the meaning is beyond the painting which remains neutral, as an object; the mere passive vehicle of an idea. A painting in black and white by William Scott (superficially, the rectilinear structure is not far removed from a Mondrian) is not a map or graph or statement of any values beyond itself: it is not a means of communicating to us something other than itself; it is not, like a Mondrian, an essay on form or proportion. It is a living entity; utterly organic, and therefore unique. It is itself a concrete sensuous fact, involving paint. It creates space directly, from its own surfaces, not so much by any reference to extraneous objects, as by a reference to space itself. Space is the object it portrays – though admittedly it gives space the momentary semblance to a spiky piece of furniture.

Patrick Heron wrote this essay in January 1953. It was first published as an article in Architects’ Year Book 5, Trevor Dannatt (ed.), Elek Books, London, 1953, and reprinted as part of ‘Space in Contemporary Painting and Architecture’, in Patrick Heron: The Changing Forms of Art, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1955, pp.40–51. The original text was later republished in Painter as Critic – Patrick Heron: Selected Writings, Mel Gooding (ed.), Tate Gallery Publishing, London, 1998, pp.73–78 SPACE IN PAINTING AND ARCHI TEC TURE 48

NICOL AS DE STAﾃ記

8 iel C 1953 oil on canvas 51 ⅝ × 22 in / 131 × 56 cm

9 ateau gris B 1953–54 oil on canvas 6 ¼ × 8 ⅝ in / 16 × 22 cm

10 Verre

et pinceau 1954 oil on canvas 15 × 21 ⅝ in / 38 × 55 cm

11 N ature morte en gris 1955 oil on canvas 35 ⅛ × 51 ⅛ in / 89 × 130 cm

HANS HARTUNG

12 T 1949–4 1949 oil on canvas 35 × 45 ⅝ in / 89 × 116 cm

13 T 1955–38 1955 oil on canvas 38 ⅝ × 22 ½ in / 98 × 57 cm

14 T 1956–23 1956 oil on canvas 70 ⅞ × 45 ¼ in / 180 × 115 cm

15 T 1952 (non titre) 1952 oil on canvas 19 ¾ × 25 ⅝ in / 50 × 65 cm

PIERRE SOUL AGES

16 P einture 10,6 × 8 cm, 1949 1949 oil on board 4 ⅛ × 3 ⅛ in / 10.6 × 8 cm

17 P einture 81 × 60 cm, 3 juin 1957 1957 oil on canvas 31 ⅞ × 23 ⅝ in / 81 × 60 cm

18 P einture 92 × 73 cm, 9 mars 1961 1961 oil on canvas 36 ¼ × 28 ¾ in / 92 × 73 cm

19 P einture 97 × 130 cm, 16 novembre 1963 1963 oil on canvas 38 ⅛ × 51 ⅛ in / 97 × 130 cm

LIST

OF

WORKS

‘The shape of colour’, Patrick Heron, Studio International, vol.187, no.963, February 1974, pp.65–75 (repro. in b&w p.66) Patrick Heron, Mel Gooding, Phaidon Press, London, 1994, pp.99 & 104 (repro. in colour p.99) Patrick Heron: Early Paintings 1945–1955, exhibition catalogue, Waddington Galleries, London, 2000, no.18 (repro. in colour p.34) (not exhibited) Artists and Patrons in Post-War Britain (Courtauld Research Papers No.2), Margaret Garlake (ed.), Ashgate Publishing, 2001 (repro. in b&w p.27) Patrick Heron, Michael McNay, Tate Publishing, London, 2002 (repro. in colour p.28, fig.22)

PATRICK HE RON (1920 –1999) 1 S quare Leaves (Abstract) : July 1952 1952 oil on canvas 30 × 20 in / 76.2 × 50.8 cm signed and dated lower left ‘P. Heron / July : 52’; signed and dated on reverse ‘Patrick / Heron’ ‘1952’ Provenance: Patrick Heron The artist’s family Exhibited: ‘Space in Colour: Hitchens, Scott, Pasmore, Frost, Vaughan, Hilton, Lanyon, Heron, Johnstone, Davie’, paintings selected by Patrick Heron, The Hanover Gallery, London, 7 July– 7 August 1953, catalogue no.13 (not repro.)

‘Romantic Abstraction: Paintings by Leading British Artists’, Symon Quinn Gallery, Huddersfield, 25 October–27 November 1954, catalogue no.9 (not repro.)

‘Patrick Heron’, The Redfern Gallery, London, 6–30 June 1956 (ex-catalogue) ‘Patrick Heron Retrospective’, The Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh, June–July 1967, catalogue no.31 (repro. in b&w fig.3)

2 Vertical Strokes : 1956 1956 oil on canvas 48 × 36 in / 121.9 × 91.4 cm titled on stretcher ‘VERTICAL STROKES : 1956’ Provenance: Patrick Heron The artist’s family

Literature: ‘Patrick Heron: the development of a painter’, Ronald Alley, Studio International, vol.174, no.891, July–August 1967, pp.18–25 (repro. in b&w p.19)

V IBR AT ION OF SPACE 82

3 Green

on Blacks : 1956 1956 oil on canvas 36 × 18 in / 91.4 × 45.7 cm

Literature: Patrick Heron, Mel Gooding, Phaidon Press, London, 1994, p.105 (repro. in colour p.106) Patrick Heron, Michael McNay, Tate Publishing, London, 2002 (repro. in colour p.40, fig.28)

signed, dated and titled on reverse ‘Patrick Heron’ ‘1956’ ‘GREEN ON / BLACKS’; signed on stretcher ‘PATRICK HERON’

5 L emon, Ochre, Black : January 1957 1957 oil on canvas 20 × 16 in / 50.8 × 40.6 cm

Provenance: Patrick Heron The artist’s family Waddington Galleries, London Private Collection, London

signed and titled on reverse ‘Patrick Heron’ ‘JANUARY 1957 / Lemon, Ochre, Black’ Provenance: Patrick Heron The artist’s family

Exhibited: ‘Patrick Heron: Early and Late Garden Paintings’, Tate St Ives, 20 March–3 June 2001 (repro. in colour in catalogue p.30)

6 Ochre

Skies : April 1957 1957 oil on canvas 48 ⅛ × 22 in / 122.2 × 56 cm

4 White

Vertical : May 1956 (Black) 1956 oil on canvas 36 × 17 ¾ in / 91.4 × 45 cm

signed and dated lower right ‘Patrick Heron’ ‘April / 57’; signed and titled on reverse ‘Patrick Heron’ ‘OCHRE SKIES / April 1957’

signed on overlap ‘PATRICK HERON’; titled on stretcher ‘WHITE VERTICAL 1956 : May’

Provenance: The Redfern Gallery, London Collection T. M. Heron (February 1958) The artist’s family Offer Waterman & Co., London Private Collection, London (August 1998)

Provenance: Patrick Heron The artist’s family Waddington Galleries, London Private Collection, London

LIST OF WORKS 83

Exhibited: ‘Patrick Heron: Oil Paintings’, The Redfern Gallery, London, February–March 1958, catalogue no.10 (not repro.)

‘Patrick Heron Retrospective’, The Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh, June–July 1967, catalogue no.48 (not repro.)

‘Patrick Heron: a retrospective exhibition of paintings 1957–66’, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 21 May–15 June 1968, catalogue no.3 (not repro.)

‘Patrick Heron’, Tate Gallery, London, 25 June– 6 September 1998, catalogue no.22 (repro. in colour p.74)

Provenance: Waddington Galleries, London (acquired from the artist) Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York (1960) American Brands Incorporated Private Collection, Europe Sotheby’s, London: 11 December 2006 (lot no.105) Daniel Katz Gallery, London Exhibited: ‘Patrick Heron’, Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York, 11 April–3 May 1960, catalogue no.14 (not repro.)

Literature: ‘ Patrick Heron I’, Alan Gouk, Artscribe: T he Fifties I, no.34, 31 March 1982, p.43 (repro. in b&w) Patrick Heron, Vivien Knight, John Taylor in association with Lund Humphries, London, 1988 (repro. in b&w pl.32)

NICOL AS DE S TAËL (1914 –1955) 8 iel C 1953 oil on canvas 51 ⅝ × 22 in / 131 × 56 cm

7 Yellow

Painting with Orange and Brown-ochre Squares : June-October 1959 1959 oil on canvas 60 × 48 ¼ in / 152.5 × 122.5 cm

signed lower left ‘Staël’; signed and dated on reverse ‘Staël’ ‘22 Mai 1953’; painted in Paris Provenance: Jacques Dubourg, Paris (55014) Private Collection, Malakoff Drouot Montaigne, Paris: 26 November 1990 (lot no.44) Private Collection, France

signed and titled on reverse ‘PATRICK / HERON’ ‘YELLOW PAINTING / WITH ORANGE + BROWN-OCHRE / SQUARES : JUNE – OCT : 1959’

Exhibited: ‘Nicolas de Staël 1914–1955’, Musée national d’Art moderne, Palais de Tokyo, Paris,

V IBR AT ION OF SPACE 84

22 February–8 April 1956, catalogue no.70 (repro.)

‘62nd Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture, Drawing, Applied Art and Architecture, Society of Scottish Artists. Section: Nicolas de Staël’, Royal Scottish Academy Galleries, Edinburgh, 6 October–11 November 1956, catalogue no.315 ‘Nicolas de Staël’, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, 13 September–20 October 1957, catalogue no.64 ‘Nicolas de Staël 1914–1955’, Musée Réattu, Arles, 28 June–8 September 1958, catalogue no.40 ‘Nicolas de Staël (1914–1955)’, Galerie Motte, Geneva, July–August 1967, catalogue no.25 ‘Elsa Triolet’, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, 10 February–30 March 1972, catalogue no.14

9 ateau gris B 1953–54 oil on canvas 6 ¼ × 8 ⅝ in / 16 × 22 cm Provenance: Jacques Dubourg, Paris Arthur Tooth & Sons, London E. J. Power, London (purchased from the above in November 1954) Private Collection, UK Exhibited: ‘Hommage à Nicolas de Staël’, Arthur Tooth & Sons, London, 6–31 March 1956, catalogue no.25 (repro.)

Literature: ‘Nicolas de Staël’, C. G. Bjurström, Paletten (Gothenburg) 7, no.2, 1956, pp.48–51 (repro. p.49) ‘Nicolas de Staël: In Memoriam’, Douglas C ooper, The Burlington Magazine (London) 98, no.638, May 1956, pp.140–146 (cit. p.142) ‘La mostra di de Staël a Parigi’, Lando Landini, Paragone (Florence) 7, no.79, July 1956, pp.70–78 (cit. p.75) ‘Nicolas de Staël’, Herta Wescher, Cimaise (Paris) 3, no.5, April 1956, pp.15–19 (cit. p.17) N icolas de Staël: Catalogue raisonné des peintures, André Chastel, Jacques Dubourg and Françoise de Staël, Editions du Temps, Paris, 1968, catalogue no.539, p.241 (repro. in b&w p.238) N icolas de Staël: Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint, Françoise de Staël, Editions Ides et C alendes, Neuchâtel, 1997, catalogue no.571, p.407 (repro. in b&w)

Literature: N icolas de Staël: Catalogue raisonné des peintures, André Chastel, Jacques Dubourg and Françoise de Staël, Editions du Temps, Paris, 1968, catalogue no.737, p.309 (repro. in b&w) N icolas de Staël: Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint, Françoise de Staël, Editions Ides et C alendes, Neuchâtel, 1997, catalogue no.802, p.522 (repro. in b&w) 10 Verre

et pinceau 1954 oil on canvas 15 × 21 ⅝ in / 38 × 55 cm signed lower left ‘Staël’; painted in Paris in summer

LIST OF WORKS 85

Provenance: Paul Rosenberg, New York (September 1954) Arthur Tooth & Sons, London (January 1956) Fischer Fine Art, London Private Collection, Switzerland Christie’s, London: 9 December 1999 (lot no.380) Private Collection, Europe (acquired at the above sale)

Literature: N icolas de Staël: Catalogue raisonné des peintures, André Chastel, Jacques Dubourg and Françoise de Staël, Editions du Temps, Paris, 1968, catalogue no.1010, p.380 (repro. in b&w) N icolas de Staël: Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint, Françoise de Staël, Editions Ides et C alendes, Neuchâtel, 1997, catalogue no.1074, p.635 (repro. in b&w)

Literature: N icolas de Staël: Catalogue raisonné des peintures, André Chastel, Jacques Dubourg and Françoise de Staël, Editions du Temps, Paris, 1968, catalogue no.830, p.335 (repro. in b&w) N icolas de Staël: Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint, Françoise de Staël, Editions Ides et C alendes, Neuchâtel, 1997, catalogue no.886, p.558 (repro. in b&w)

HANS HART UNG (1904 –1989) 12 T 1949–4 1949 oil on canvas 35 × 45 ⅝ in / 89 × 116 cm

11 Nature

morte en gris 1955 oil on canvas 35 ⅛ × 51 ⅛ in / 89 × 130 cm

signed and dated lower right ‘Hartung 49’ Provenance: Collection Madeleine Rousseau, Paris Private Collection, Switzerland Galerie Mony Calatchi, Paris Collection Denise Lévy, Paris

painted in Antibes Provenance: Private Collection, France (acquired from the artist) Private Collection, Europe (acquired directly from the above)

Exhibited: ‘Les réalités nouvelles’, Chapelle du Lycée Ampère, Lyon, May–June 1949 ‘Linien 1949’, Galerie Arne Bruun Rasmussen, Copenhagen, in association with Galerie Denise René, Paris, August–September 1949 ‘Anglo-French Exhibits’, New Burlington Galleries, London, March–April 1950 ‘Hans Hartung, Paris–Walter Bodmer, Basel’,

Exhibited: ‘Nicolas de Staël. Un automne, un hiver’, Musée Picasso, Antibes, 2 July–16 October 2005, catalogue no.35 (repro. in colour p.60)

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Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, 23 February–23 March 1952 ‘Hans Hartung’, Galerie Pascal Lansberg, Paris, 10 April–9 May 2015, catalogue p.18 (repro. in colour pp.19–20; detail on cover)

of the Hans Hartung catalogue raisonné, currently in preparation 14 T 1956–23 1956 oil on canvas 70 ⅞ × 45 ¼ in / 180 × 115 cm

This work is recorded in the archives of the Hartung–Bergman Foundation and will be included in the second volume (1945–60) of the Hans Hartung catalogue raisonné, currently in preparation

signed and dated lower left ‘Hartung 56’ Provenance: Galerie de France, Paris

13 T 1955–38 1955 oil on canvas 38 ⅝ × 22 ½ in / 98 × 57 cm

Exhibited: ‘Hans Hartung: A Vision into Abstraction 1923–1964, A 75th Birthday Tribute’, Fischer Fine Art, London, January–February 1981; touring to Galerie Pels-Leusden, Berlin, April 1981, catalogue no.10 (repro.)

signed and dated lower right ‘Hartung 55’ Provenance: Galerie de France Landau Collection Private Collection

This work is recorded in the archives of the Hartung–Bergman Foundation and will be included in the second volume (1945–60) of the Hans Hartung catalogue raisonné, currently in preparation

Exhibited: ‘Hartung: Recent paintings’, Galerie de France, Paris, 1 November–31 December 1956 ‘Hans Hartung: Retrospective’, Musée d’Antibes, Antibes, July–September 1959 ‘Hans Hartung’, Galerie Pascal Lansberg, Paris, 10 April–9 May 2015, catalogue p.36 (repro. in colour p.37)

15 T 1952 (non titre) 1952 oil on canvas 19 ¾ × 25 ⅝ in / 50 × 65 cm signed and dated lower left ‘Hartung 52’

This work is recorded in the archives of the Hartung–Bergman Foundation and will be included in the second volume (1945–60)

Provenance: Private Collection, France

LIST OF WORKS 87

This untitled work is recorded as HH1597 in the archives of the Hartung–Bergman Foundation and will be included in the second volume (1945–60) of the Hans Hartung catalogue raisonné, currently in preparation

Literature: Soulages. L’œuvre complet. Peintures. I. 1946–1959, Pierre Encrevé, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1994, no.302 (repro. in colour p.248) 18 P einture 92 × 73 cm, 9 mars 1961 1961 oil on canvas 36 ¼ × 28 ¾ in / 92 × 73 cm

P IE RRE SOUL AGES ( b. 1919) 16 P einture 10,6 × 8 cm, 1949 1949 oil on board 4 ⅛ × 3 ⅛ in / 10.6 × 8 cm

signed lower left ‘Soulages’; dated on reverse ‘9 mars 61’ Provenance: Kootz Gallery, New York (1961) Collection Mr and Mrs G. Holmes Perkins, Philadelphia (acquired in 1964) The University of Pennsylvania Sotheby’s, London: 5 December 1996 (lot no.29) Collection Agnes and Karlheinz Essl Christie’s, London: 13 October 2014 (lot no.34) Helly Nahmad Gallery, London

Provenance: Mr and Mrs Guy Marester, Paris (1949) Mrs Guy Marester, Paris Private Collection, Paris Literature: Soulages. L’œuvre complet. Peintures. I. 1946–1959, Pierre Encrevé, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1994, no.37b (repro. in colour p.102) 17 P einture 81 × 60 cm, 3 juin 1957 1957 oil on canvas 31 ⅞ × 23 ⅝ in / 81 × 60 cm

Exhibited: ‘Soulages’, Kootz Gallery, New York, 24 October–11 November 1961 ‘Philadelphia Collects 20th Century’, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 3 October–17 November 1963 (repro. in catalogue p.33) ‘Philadelphia Collects 20th Century’, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 1977 (repro. in catalogue) ‘Pierre Soulages: Painting the Light’, Sammlung Essl–Kunst der Gegenwart, Klosterneuburg,

signed lower right ‘Soulages’; dated on reverse Provenance: The artist’s studio Private Collection, UK

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Vienna, 30 June–3 September 2006, catalogue p.42 (repro. in colour pp.14, 24 & 43) Literature: Soulages. L’œuvre complet. Peintures. II. 1959–1978, Pierre Encrevé, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1995, no.446 (repro. in colour p.67) 19 P einture 97 × 130 cm, 16 novembre 1963 1963 oil on canvas 38 ⅛ × 51 ⅛ in / 97 × 130 cm titled and signed on reverse ‘16 – 11 – 63 / SOULAGES’; titled on stretcher ‘Peinture 130 × 97 16 nov 63’ but inscribed ‘HAUT’ (top) to indicate the landscape orientation Provenance: Kootz Gallery, New York (1963) Galerie de France, Paris (1970) Private Collection, Copenhagen (acquired from the above in October 1973) Exhibited: ‘Soulages’, Kootz Gallery, New York, 28 January–15 February 1964 ‘Soulages’, Galerie Protée, Toulouse, 11 February–9 March 1972 Literature: Soulages. L’œuvre complet. Peintures. II. 1959–1978, Pierre Encrevé, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1995, no.528 (repro. in colour p.100)

LIST OF WORKS 89

BIOGRAPHIES

PATRICK HE RON Patrick Heron was born in Headingley, Leeds, in 1920. In 1925 his family moved to Cornwall, where his father worked as the general manager of a textile company.

From 1927 the family spent five months at Eagles Nest, a house above Zennor, before moving to St Ives. The family relocated to Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, in 1929. Between 1937 and 1939, Heron attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London, as a part-time student. In 1944 he worked as an assistant at Bernard Leach’s pottery studio in St Ives; there he became part of the local community of artists which included Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Adrian Stokes and Naum Gabo.

In April 1945, Heron married Delia Reiss and they moved to London where he began to paint full-time. The same year, Heron published his first piece of art criticism for The New English Weekly, on Ben Nicholson. He continued to contribute to The New English Weekly and became art critic for The New Statesman and Nation from 1947 until 1950. In 1947 he broadcast a series of five talks on contemporary painting for the BBC Third Programme. He met the American art critic, Clement Greenberg, in 1954. The following year, he became London correspondent for Arts Digest, New York (later Arts). In 1955 Patrick Heron: The Changing Forms of Art, a selection of his writings, was published in London and in the United States.

In the spring of 1946, Heron attended the Braque and Rouault exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London. He had an early interest in French art, visiting The National Gallery in 1933 and being shown work by Cézanne. In 1941 he bought a book illustrated with twenty-four paintings by Matisse (published in 1939 by Braun et Cie) and he saw Matisse’s ‘The Red Studio’ at The Redfern Gallery in London in 1943. Heron would visit France in 1948 and 1949, going first to the South and then to Paris where he attended the Salon de mai, visited Braque, and wrote about young French painters. In 1952 he re-visited Paris with William Scott and met French painters including Nicolas de Staël and Pierre Soulages.

Heron’s first solo exhibition was held at The Redfern Gallery in 1947 and he continued to exhibit there on a regular basis during the 1950s. His 1956 Redfern exhibition ‘Tachiste Garden Paintings’ was the first to reveal how fully he had embraced abstraction in his paintings. These works were followed by his Stripe paintings, first exhibited in the Redfern’s 1957 group exhibition, Metavisual, Tachiste, Abstract. Heron’s first retrospective exhibition was held at Wakefield Art Gallery in 1952 and toured the north of England. From 1953 until 1956, Heron taught one day a week at Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. In April 1956, after

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purchasing Eagles Nest, the family returned to Cornwall. In 1958, after Ben Nicholson moved to Switzerland, Heron took over his studio in St Ives.

In 1960 Heron’s first solo exhibition in the United States was held at Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York, and he had his first one-man show at Waddington Galleries, in London. In 1959 he had been awarded the Grand Prize (International Jury) at the Walker Art Gallery’s second John Moores Liverpool Exhibition and in 1965 he received the Silver Medal at VIII Bienal de São Paulo. Retrospective exhibitions of his work were shown at Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh, in 1967, the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, in 1968 and in June 1972 an exhibition of recent paintings and earlier canvases opened at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London.

From 1966, Heron published a series of articles in Studio International in which he challenged the perceived supremacy of recent American art. In 1967 Heron had visited Australia, lecturing in Perth and Sydney. He returned to Australia in 1973, representing Great Britain at the first Sydney Biennale and touring with his lecture ‘The Shape of Colour’. In 1978 Heron delivered his lecture, ‘The Colour of Colour’, at the University of Texas at Austin, which coincided with his retrospective exhibition at the University Art Museum. Patrick and Delia Heron were made honorary citizens of Texas by order of the Secretary of State for Texas. In May, the following year, Delia Heron died at Eagles Nest.

Heron was appointed Trustee of the Tate Gallery in 1980, a position he held until 1987. In 1985 a retrospective exhibition was organised at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, and Heron was included in the group show, St Ives 1939–1964, at the Tate Gallery. Heron was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Royal College of Art, London, in 1987.

From 1989–90, Heron became Artist-in-Residence at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, producing over fifty paintings. In the 1990s Heron collaborated on several architectural commissions including the design for the coloured glass window at the new Tate Gallery in St Ives, which was inaugurated in 1993. His ‘Big Paintings’ exhibition of large-scale canvases opened at the Camden Arts Centre, London, in 1994, touring to Arnolfini, Bristol and the public commission ‘Big Painting Sculpture’, installed at Stag Place, near Victoria Station, was unveiled in 1998.

Mel Gooding’s monograph on Heron’s life and work was published by Phaidon Press in 1994, and 1998 saw the publication of Painter as Critic – Patrick Heron: Selected Writings to coincide with the major retrospective held at the Tate Gallery, curated by David Sylvester.

Heron died on 20 March 1999 in Zennor, Cornwall.

BIOGRAPHIES 93

NICOL AS DE S TAËL Nicolas de Staël was born in St Petersburg in 1914. In 1919, following the Revolution, the family were forced to leave Russia and they emigrated to Poland. Following his father’s death in 1921, and that of his mother a year later, de Staël and his sisters were sent to Brussels to live under the care of Russian expatriates. In 1933 he enrolled at the Académie royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, where he developed his art practice.

During the 1930s, de Staël travelled extensively in Europe and to Morocco and Algeria, broadening his knowledge of art. A visit to Paris introduced him to the work of Cézanne, Matisse, Braque and Soutine. In 1936 his work was exhibited for the first time in a group show at the Salle ‘Dietrich’, in Brussels, with Alain Haustrate and Rostislas Loukine. In Marrakech, he had met the painter Jeannine Guillou with whom he would live and work, in impoverished circumstances, until her death in 1946. They lived for the early part of 1938 in Naples, before settling in Paris. For a few weeks, de Staël worked in the studio of Fernand Léger. Shortly after the onset of World War II, he joined the French Foreign Legion and spent a year fighting in Tunisia. In 1940, after demobilisation, he joined Jeannine in Nice, where he worked on still life paintings and a series of portraits of her.

Returning to Occupied Paris in 1943, de Staël was supported by art dealer Jeanne Bucher, whom he had first met in 1939. Since 1942 he had moved towards abstraction and he produced a substantial body of new work. In January 1944, Jeanne Bucher included his work in an exhibition with Wassily Kandinsky and César Domela.

During this time, de Staël formed a close friendship with fellow Russian artist, André Lanskoy, who encouraged him to adopt thickly applied paint in order to build up a rich and textured surface. De Staël’s first solo exhibition was held at Galerie L’Esquisse in 1944. This was followed by a one-man show at Galerie Jeanne Bucher the next year, which drew much attention from both critics and collectors. In October 1945, de Staël moved to a studio in Montparnasse. Jeannine, suffering from ill health due to malnutrition, passed away early in 1946. Following his wife’s death, de Staël married Françoise Chapouton.

In October 1946, dealer Louis Carré entered into an oral agreement with de Staël to purchase all works he produced. In 1947 de Staël moved to a large studio at 7, rue Gauguet, where he worked on large-scale works, applying wide planes of colour with a palette knife. The new studio was close to that of Georges Braque, who he had befriended in 1944. Braque recommended that the American dealer, Theodore Schempp, visit de Staël’s studio. Schempp later held de Staël’s first solo exhibition in the United States at his New York gallery in December 1950. In New York, de Staël

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was also included in Carré’s group show, Advancing French Art, and Young Painters from the U. S. and France at Sidney Janis Gallery, which included work

by Mark Rothko.

Carré ended his contract with de Staël in 1948, leaving him without representation. Jacques Dubourg had opened his Paris gallery in July 1946. Lanskoy had told Dubourg about de Staël, leading him to agree to become his dealer. Galerie Jacques Dubourg held the first of a series of solo exhibitions in June 1950. In March 1950, de Staël had his first museum acquisition: ‘Composition’, 1949, was purchased by the Musée d’Art moderne in Paris. In the winter of 1951 and in early 1952, de Staël painted from nature. He was particularly impressed by a night-time football match at Parc des Princes and brought this subject to his work. In the summer, he painted the beach of Lavandou.

In February 1952, twenty-six paintings, including seven early works, were exhibited at Matthiesen Gallery, in New Bond Street, London, with a catalogue introduction written by Denys Sutton. It was de Staël’s first solo exhibition in London, but it had limited impact. In March 1953, an exhibition of thirty-six paintings, including major works such as ‘La Rue Gauguet’ and ‘Parc des Princes’, took place at the Knoedler Galleries in New York. The show proved to be a great success and was followed by a solo show at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. During his visit to America, de Staël visited several institutions and saw Cézanne’s ‘Grandes Baigneuses’ at The Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania. New York dealer, Paul Rosenberg, gained exclusive representation in the United States and exhibited his recent work in early 1954.

Returning from America, de Staël decided to live, and find a second studio, outside Paris. In November 1953, he purchased Le Castellet, in Ménerbes. He began to paint with more fluidity, reverting to the exclusive use of brushwork, and his 1954 exhibition at Galerie Jacques Dubourg signalled his return to figurative painting.

He spent the summer of 1954 in Paris and moved south in August. He would spend September alone in Antibes, where he took a studio overlooking the sea. He remained there over the winter, visiting Ménerbes from time to time. During this period, his mental health began to decline.

At the beginning of 1955, de Staël was working towards solo exhibitions with Dubourg, Arthur Tooth, in London, and Musée d’Antibes. On 5 March, he attended a Schönberg-Webern performance at the Petit-Marigny theatre, Paris. Inspired, on returning to Antibes, he set up a 4 × 6 metre canvas: the painting, ‘Le concert’, would remain unfinished.

De Staël took his own life on 16 March 1955 in Antibes.

BIOGRAPHIES 95

HANS HART UNG Hans Hartung was born in Leipzig in 1904. His family moved to Switzerland in 1912, where his father worked for a pharmaceutical company in Basel. The family returned to Leipzig at the outbreak of World War I and then went on to Dresden where, at secondary school, Hartung studied the arts. He drew from an early age and used patches of colour (taches). While studying the history of art at university, he attended a course taught by Wilhelm Pinder at the Akademie für Graphische Künste und Kunstgewerbe in Leipzig. In 1925 Hartung enrolled at the Akademie der Künste in Dresden. He became interested in the work of Rouault, Matisse, Braque and Picasso and a holiday in the south of France allowed him to study works by Cézanne and the Cubist artists. In 1929 Hartung married the Norwegian painter, Anna-Eva Bergman, who he had met in Paris earlier that year; they would later divorce, in 1938, but resumed their relationship in 1952 and re-married in 1957.

Hartung’s works were exhibited for the first time in 1931 at a one-man show at Galerie Heinrich Kühn, Dresden. The following year, due to the rise of National Socialism in Germany, he and his wife left for the island of Minorca. However, dwindling resources would force them to leave in 1934, first for Paris and later Stockholm. Hartung briefly returned to Berlin in 1935, but after being subjected to police surveillance and interrogation he left for good, settling in Paris. He exhibited a painting at Galerie Pierre Loeb in 1936 and, until 1939, participated each year at the Salon des surindépendents.

In Paris, Hartung became acquainted with artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Joan Miró. He formed a close friendship with sculptor, Julio González, whose studio he shared after his passport was confiscated in 1938. That same year, he participated in the anti-Nazi exhibition, Twentieth Century German Art, held at the New Burlington Galleries, in London. With the outbreak of war imminent, Hartung registered his opposition to the Nazi regime and joined the French Foreign Legion, bound for North Africa. Following demobilisation in 1940, he returned to France, living with the González family, working as a farm labourer in the Lot region and rarely painting. Julio González died suddenly in March 1942 and, as the Occupation spread, Hartung sought asylum in Spain, but he was imprisoned there for seven months. Following his release, he re-joined the Foreign Legion and, seriously injured in an attack, had his right leg amputated.

Returning to Paris in 1945, Hartung was granted French citizenship. He was awarded the Military Medal, the Croix de Guerre and, in 1952, the Legion of Honour.

He began, again, to paint and exhibit his work, having his first solo show in Paris

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at the Galerie Lydia Conti. Hartung became familiar with the work of other painters, including Pierre Soulages and Mark Rothko. In 1949 the first monograph on his work was published, with texts by Madeleine Rousseau and Ottomar Domnick, and a preface by James Johnson Sweeney.

Hartung’s work was included in the group show, Advancing French Art, organised by the dealer Louis Carré in 1951. The exhibition toured North America and his work was brought to an American audience for the first time. His first museum retrospective was held at the Kunsthalle Basel the following year and in 1953 a solo exhibition took place at the Lefevre Gallery in London. In 1954 a major exhibition, including fifty paintings, was held at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, and he participated at the Venice Biennale. In 1956 he signed a contract with Galerie de France in Paris, with whom he had an exhibition of new paintings, and took part in Documenta in Kassel. In 1958 Hartung and Bergman designed and built a new studio in Paris on rue Gauguet.

In 1960 Hartung won the Gran Premio for painting at the Venice Biennale and R. V. Gindertael’s monograph on his work was published. He started to use vinyl paints, which increased the spontaneity of his painting, and worked directly on large format canvases. The following year, he began to scrape lines into paint, using different tools, and developed a method of spraying colour onto canvas. A major exhibition, which included 120 canvases, toured in 1963 from Kunsthaus Zürich to Museum des 20 Jahrhunderts, Vienna; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. He received the Great Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1964 and, at the invitation of the Carnegie Institute, made his first trip to the United States.

In Antibes, Hartung began work in 1968 on a new house and studios. The construction would take six years. A large-scale retrospective was held at the Musée d’Art moderne, in Paris, in 1969 and he received the Grand Prix des Beaux-Arts from the City of Paris in 1970. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, exhibited recent works in 1975 and Hartung’s memoirs, Autoportrait, were published the following year by Grasset. In 1981 the Städtische Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf, and the Staatsgalerie Moderna Kunst, Munich, organised a major retrospective. Hartung became a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in 1977 and was elevated to the rank of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour by President François Mitterand in 1989.

Hartung died on 7 December 1989 in Antibes. The Fondation Hartung Bergman was established in 1994.

BIOGRAPHIES 97

P IE RRE SOUL AGES Pierre Soulages was born in Rodez, France, in 1919. From an early age he was interested in prehistoric and Romanesque art. He moved to Paris in 1938 to train as a drawing teacher and attended exhibitions of works by Cézanne and Picasso.

He briefly attended the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts before returning to Rodez. Following the outbreak of World War II, Soulages was drafted into the military in 1940. He was demobilised the following year and enrolled at the École des beaux-arts in Montpellier, where he met and later married Colette Llaurens.

Conscripted into forced labour in 1942, Soulages went underground for the remainder of the Occupation. During this time he met the artist Sonia Delaunay and became interested in abstract art.

Soulages settled in Courbevoie, near Paris, in 1946 and was able to devote his time fully to painting. He, unsuccessfully, submitted paintings to the Salon d’automne. His sombre, abstract paintings, dominated by black, were notable in their distance from the semi-figurative, colourful paintings of the postwar period.

In 1947 he hired a space to hang his work at the Salon des surindépendents. It was here that his paintings were exhibited publicly for the first time and they attracted a great amount of interest. After relocating to Montparnasse in 1948, he was visited in his studio by James Johnson Sweeney, who later became Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York, and an important supporter of his work.

Soulages’s first solo exhibition was held at Galerie Lydia Conti, Paris, in 1949. The same year the Musée de Grenoble made the first museum acquisition of his work and he designed the costumes and sets for Roger Vailland’s ballet Héloïse et Abélard. In New York, his work was included in the group show, Painted in 1949, at Betty Parsons Gallery. In 1951 The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, became the first major American institution to purchase his work, followed shortly after with acquisitions by the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum, both in New York. His first American one-man show was held at Kootz Gallery, New York, in 1954; he signed a contract with Samuel Kootz and exhibited with him over the next four years. Soulages travelled to the United States for the first time in 1957, where he met artists including Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell.

Soulages exhibited in London at the Gimpel Fils gallery in 1955.

In 1958 Soulages built a house and studio, to his own design, in Sète, in the south of France. His first retrospective exhibition was held at Museum Folkwang, Essen, in 1960, and toured Germany. In 1964 he was awarded the Carnegie Prize from the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Further retrospectives followed

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at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 1966, the Musée national d’art moderne, Paris, in 1967 and at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and Musée du Québec, both in 1968. He received public commissions including the design for a glass mosaic window at the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen, in 1966 and a ceramic mural for the Oliver Tyrone Corporation skyscraper in Pittsburgh in 1968. In 1975 Soulages created the first of three bronze reliefs, based on his earlier etchings; these would be his only works in sculpture. Soulages was honoured with the Rembrandt Award, Amsterdam, in 1976.

In 1979, he was named Foreign Honorary Member for Art, by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, in New York. It was also the year that his first singlepigment paintings were exhibited at the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, in Paris. Soulages later described these works as outrenoir, or ‘beyond black’. He had previously used black to contrast against other colours, thick, calligraphic strokes against lighter backgrounds. When he reduced his palette to black alone, his paintings were founded in the reflection of light on the black surface.

Soulages won the Grand Prix National for Painting, Paris, in 1986, and the following year was given a major commission from the French state for the design of 104 windows for the Romanesque abbey at Conques. Beyond Europe and North America, retrospective exhibitions were held at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, in 1993 and the China Fine Arts Palace, Beijing, and Taipei Fine Arts Museum, in 1994. In 2001 he exhibited in St Petersburg and Moscow. The Centre Georges Pompidou opened a major retrospective of his work in October 2009.

The first volume of Pierre Encrevé’s catalogue raisonné, Soulages, L’œuvre complet. Peintures I. 1946–1959, was published by Éditions du Seuil in 1994. Three further volumes have since been published: II. 1959–1978 (Seuil 1996); III. 1979–1997 (Seuil 1998); IV. 1997–2013 (Gallimard 2015). The Musée Soulages opened in Rodez in 2014 and Soulages was awarded the Legion of Honour in 2015.

Soulages lives and works in Paris and Sète.

BIOGRAPHIES 99

L’ E S PAC E

C OM ME

S U JE T PAT R IC K H E RON E T L’ E X P RE S S ION N I S ME AB S TR AI T F R ANÇ AI S É R IC DE C HA S S E Y

Préparant au printemps 1956 une exposition personnelle à la galerie Redfern de Londres, Patrick Heron aurait déclaré à son épouse : « Et voici la première exposition londonienne de peinture tachiste !» 1 En faisant référence, en français dans le texte, à un mouvement artistique parisien, il soulignait sa pleine inscription dans une tendance internationale de la peinture abstraite de l’après-guerre. C’est là une position plus singulière qu’il n’y paraît car il venait de saluer avec enthousiasme l’arrivée de New York sur la scène internationale, grâce à l’expressionnisme abstrait, et c’est plutôt de ce côté-là de l’Atlantique qu’on aurait pu attendre qu’il prît ses références. En mars 1956 en effet, faisant un compte-rendu de l’exposition Modern Art in the United States qui s’était tenue en janvier à la Tate Gallery, il avait conclu que, face aux derniers développements de la peinture aux États-Unis, « nous regarderons New York avec le même enthousiasme que Paris pour ce qui concerne les nouveaux développements [en matière de peinture] » 2. Les critiques britanniques accueillirent d’ailleurs les tableaux qu’il présenta dans son exposition personnelle suivante, en 1958, comme une incarnation nationale (ou locale) de l’expressionnisme abstrait étatsunien, faisant de Mark Rothko son « mentor 3 ». Sa déclaration à son épouse indiquait cependant que la situation était plus complexe. Parce qu’il voulait situer son travail – et celui de ses contemporains et amis – au sein de l’actualité mondiale de l’art, ce qui était la seule manière de sortir du préjugé qui enfermait de façon récurrente la production artistique britannique dans son insularité, Heron entretenait dans sa peinture des années 1950 un dialogue passionné avec quelquesuns de ses contemporains continentaux, ce qui ne signifiait nullement un abaissement de ses ambitions puisqu’aussi bien, comme le disait en son temps Henri Matisse, « évit[er] l’influence des autres » est « une lâcheté et un manque de sincérité vis-à-vis de [soi]-même » 4.

Seuls les préjugés tenaces ont empêché que l’on puisse prendre au sérieux ce dialogue et en étudier les ramifications, tant les préjugés nationalistes, qui enferment toutes les créations dans le cadre strict du pays qui a vu naître leurs auteurs, que les préjugés internationalistes, qui prétendent tout juger à partir de l’idée qu’à chaque époque un pays et un seul domine tout le champ de l’art (et, pour ce qui concerne l’après-seconde-guerre-mondiale, ce pays est alors les États-Unis, puisque « New York a volé l’idée d’art moderne » à Paris 5). Il semble que le temps soit venu de ne plus céder à ces préjugés et de prendre pleinement conscience de la façon dont une peinture comme celle de Heron peut mieux être comprise si on la situe précisément en face de celle pratiquée au même moment par des artistes français comme Nicolas de Staël, Hans Hartung ou Pierre Soulages – sans oublier pour autant le dialogue entretenu avec les artistes étatsuniens tels Rothko ou Sam Francis (auquel il rendit

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visite à Paris en 1957), mais en rétablissant en quelque sorte un équilibre depuis longtemps rompu.

En réalité la référence au tachisme dans la bouche de Heron n’aurait su renvoyer à une tendance bien définie de l’art français des années 1950. Le mot avait été popularisé à Paris par le critique Charles Estienne, qui l’avait repris de son usage négatif par Pierre Guéguen en 1953 (à l’occasion d’une polémique violente contre le premier), pour l’appliquer à ces artistes qui « repartaient à zéro, et non pas de la géométrie mais de la matière, de la substance même de leur peinture, prissent-elles au besoin la forme de ‘taches’. » 6 Au départ, il désignait seulement quelques peintres qui revendiquaient à la fois la non-figuration et l’héritage du surréalisme, rassemblés en 1953 au Salon d’octobre, tels Marcelle Loutchansky ou Simon Hantaï. Mais il prit rapidement une valeur plus vague, à la faveur des discussions passionnées qui agitaient alors le milieu de l’art parisien, à la recherche d’un terme qui permettrait de désigner les tendances nouvelles de la peinture abstraite. En 1956, Estienne luimême proclamait que « le tachisme est mort » 7, mais l’usage du mot s’était largement répandu internationalement, en particulier en Angleterre, où son intraductibilité en même temps que sa brièveté servait à désigner tout tableau sur lequel on trouvait des éléments autonomes non-figuratifs, des applications libres de matière picturale nonlimitées par un dessin 8. Il permettait aussi de rassembler sous une même étiquette des productions artistiques de toutes origines, puisqu’on observait cette manière aussi bien chez les Français que chez les Étatsuniens ou chez les Britanniques, quoique l’origine française du terme signalât que le point de référence restait bien l’actualité parisienne, dont Heron était un bon connaisseur.

En avril 1950, dans l’une de ses chroniques hebdomadaires pour The New Statesman and Nation, qu’il tient avec une certaine régularité de 1947 à 1953 en même temps qu’il poursuit sa carrière de peintre, il analyse la scène artistique française à partir des artistes qui en sont présentés dans une exposition-bilan londonienne, tout en y incluant certains peintres qui ne sont représentés par aucune œuvre 9. Il distingue en particulier Nicolas de Staël, dont la « qualité de sécheresse est accentuée à tel point que sa pâte devient un ciment grumeleux gris, où la recherche tonale exclue entièrement la couleur », et le compare avec Hans Hartung et Pierre Soulages (absents de l’exposition), qui « entrelacent de touches légères et calligraphiques (avec des couleurs plates et fortes) les grilles sévères de leur structure abstraite, sans se préoccuper du ton atmosphérique ». Il conclue, d’une manière qu’il reprendra souvent par la suite : « […] pour ces peintres abstraits, l’Espace est en soi le sujet. Il doit être présenté sans que des images spécifiques d’objets réels y fassent intrusion, parce que cela diluerait l’essence de l’Espace et qu’on serait alors distrait,

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à cause des associations que cela susciterait, de la contemplation presque mystique de ce qui est, après tout, un élément primordial de l’Univers. » Les œuvres de ces trois artistes français (d’origines russe et allemande pour deux d’entre eux), alors largement salués par la critique parisienne et internationale, ont été présentées à plusieurs reprises à Londres au cours des années 1950, soit dans des expositions collectives, soit dans des expositions personnelles. De Staël a bénéficié d’une exposition personnelle de caractère rétrospectif à la galerie Matthiesen en février 1952, avec une trentaine de tableaux, suivie en 1956 de deux grandes expositions posthumes, à la Whitechapel Gallery et à la galerie Arthur Tooth & Sons. Hartung avait présenté une trentaine de gouaches dès janvier 1949 à la galerie Hanover (en duo avec Peter Foldes) ; sa première exposition personnelle londonienne, avec une quinzaine de peintures récentes, a lieu en janvier 1953 à la galerie Lefevre. Quant à Soulages, il fallut attendre avril-mai 1955, mais ce fut pour une grande exposition à la galerie Gimpel Fils, réunissant une quinzaine de tableaux peints depuis 1950, parfois de dimensions monumentales. Au-delà de ces présentations à Londres, Heron a très tôt une connaissance approfondie du travail de ces peintres, comme du reste de celui des artistes français de l’après-seconde-guerre-mondiale en général, grâce à ses nombreux voyages à Paris au tournant des années 1940–1950, qui incluent visites d’expositions et visites d’ateliers (notamment celui de Soulages). Quoiqu’intéressé par les développements de l’art étatsunien à partir de 1954–1956 (d’abord par ouïedire puis de visu) et par ceux des artistes de son propre pays, qu’il défend notamment dans des articles – et sans s’interdire un droit d’inventaire dans chaque situation – il reste marqué par sa conviction du début des années 1950 que « la peinture française est la meilleure du monde : elle occupe toujours le centre de la scène. De fait, elle est elle-même la scène. » 10 Le point de vue des artistes parisiens est finalement beaucoup plus insulaire, marqué par la certitude que Paris est effectivement le centre du monde de l’art et par le manque de curiosité à l’égard de tout ce qui ne s’y passe pas, avec en outre, quoique jamais exprimé comme tel, un préjugé particulièrement tenace à l’égard de l’art britannique (dont la France ne s’est curieusement pas encore remise, si l’on en juge par le petit nombre d’expositions consacrées à celui-ci jusqu’à aujourd’hui par les institutions artistiques françaises). Certes, lors de son premier voyage à Londres, pendant l’été 1950, de Staël écrit à son épouse : « Non, l’histoire d’une grande exposition à Londres, quand on sait ce que c’est que Londres, c’est une des choses les plus culottées qu’on puisse imaginer. » 11 Mais il avait dit quelques jours auparavant : « C’est la première ville après Paris où l’on peut vraiment travailler je crois mais ils ne fichent rien leurs peintres ici. » 12 Il n’existe pas de trace chez les trois

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artistes français d’un intérêt pour le peintre britannique qui leur consacre pourtant des articles et des commentaires élogieux (ce que peut cependant expliquer la barrière de la langue), excepté de la part de Soulages. En 1953, celui-ci écrit une lettre à Heron où il manifeste une attention polie à l’égard de son strict contemporain (les deux artistes sont nés à quelques semaines de distance) : « J’ai été très intéressé par la photo de votre peinture. […] J’ai trouvé votre peinture très vivante, très ‘peintre’ avec une vraie liberté et un contact réel entre la matière picturale, le métier et le peintre. C’est à mon avis la marque première de l’authenticité. Et cela me donne envie de voir d’autres toiles de vous. Après cette photographie, je comprends encore mieux l’intérêt que vous portez à l’espace et l’importance que vous lui donnez dans vos réflexions sur la peinture. […] J’aimerai [sic] beaucoup vous voir et parler de ces choses qui nous intéressent avec vous. Pensez-vous venir à Paris bientôt ? Peut-être viendrais-je à Londres. […] Bien sincèrement et à bientôt j’espère. » 13 Si Heron expose au Salon de mai de 1949 (comme les trois Français), puis dans une petite présentation consacrée à La peinture britannique contemporaine en 1957, il faudra attendre 1977 pour qu’une exposition personnelle lui soit consacrée à Paris, par la galerie Le Balcon des arts.

Comme il le fera à propos de sa propre peinture lorsqu’il aura abandonné les sujets figuratifs explicites, à partir de 1956 (il en mettra en valeur « l’interrelation spatiale de chacune des touches (ou des traits ou des barres) de couleur » 14), Heron met en valeur les particularités spatiales de la peinture des trois artistes français, à partir de la conviction que « […] pour les peintres non-figuratifs, l’espace en soi est devenu le sujet. » 15 Il partage en effet leurs réticences tant à l’égard d’un formalisme, qui enferme la valeur de la peinture dans l’obéissance à des règles techniques prescrites par l’histoire autonome de l’art, qu’à l’égard d’un psychologisme effusif, qui cherche la signification des œuvres dans un lyrisme à prétention métaphysique (du type de celui que l’on trouve par exemple dans les déclarations de Georges Mathieu). Il met en valeur la structuration de la surface par des éléments plastiques affirmés mais sans enfermer celle-ci sur une bidimensionnalité de principe : « Il y a une conscience plastique immensément puissante chez Soulages comme chez de Staël. Ils n’expriment pas seulement un sens de l’espace, d’un espace sensible voire tangible ; ils expriment des formes dans l’espace – même si cela ne nous rend pas conscients de l’identité réelle de ces formes. […]. Nous pressentons leurs formes, leurs volumes organisés dans l’espace comme étant quelque chose au-delà de la toile, avec son incrustation épaisse de pigments. » 16 Il a pu apprécier la manière dont ces deux artistes ont très tôt utilisé la grille cubiste non plus comme un principe sous-jacent sur lequel accrocher des objets, mais

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comme une forme en soi, qui ne se sépare pas de la totalité de la composition mais y joue un rôle équivalent à celui de tous les autres éléments du tableau. C’est ce que fait par exemple de Staël dans Harmonie grise, beige, taches rouges de 1948, montré à Londres en 1952 sous le titre de Composition et qui figure également à la Whitechapel Gallery en 1956 : la structure explosive y est constituée par des barres aussi bien noires que de couleur, dans un enchevêtrement indécis entre le fond et la forme. C’est également ce que fait Soulages, chez qui Heron apprécie le fait qu’il crée « une image plastique à partir d’une image linéaire » 17, lorsqu’il abandonne la structure autonome, simplement remplie, qui domine Peinture 129,5 × 167,5, 14 avril 1949 (exposée au Salon de mai de 1949), pour la solution plus complexe et plus ambiguë que l’on observe dans Peinture 100 × 65 cm, 1949 (montrée chez Gimpel Fils en 1950), très proche de Peinture 10,6 × 8 cm, 1949 (cat. no.16), où une structure noire est placée à la fois devant et derrière les aplats irréguliers, ocres, gris et noir, qui l’enserrent. Lorsque Heron abandonne la figuration explicite, il emploie des compositions similaires, par exemple dans Green Pink (Garden) : 1956, entièrement composé de rectangles plus ou moins fins (certains au point de devenir des lignes, de peinture directement sortie du tube) qui forment une grille orthogonale souple jouant avec le blanc de la toile.

J’ai qualifié « d’explosive » une œuvre de de Staël mais le terme est impropre car la très grande majorité des tableaux de celui-ci, précisément à cause de leur complexité spatiale, ont un caractère contenu. Il en va de même chez Soulages, dont l’insistance sur le noir comme moyen privilégié de la construction du tableau et de remplissage de ses surfaces, se distingue de l’affirmation autoritaire que celleci prend chez d’autres artistes qui lui sont contemporains. Ainsi également chez Hartung, même si un critique du Times parle à propos de ses tableaux exposés à Londres en 1953 de « griffonage élémentaire » 18.

D’une part, le travail sur la lumière et l’intérêt pour les jeux de clair-obscur viennent complexifier et ralentir ses compositions, comme on le voit dans T 1955–38 (cat. no.13) de 1955 où le double balayage de la surface par des longs coups de pinceau verticaux gris et par un motif graphique noir est contrebalancé par la présence de deux taches quasiment symétriques, l’une rouge, l’autre jaune, mélangées au gris sur et sous lequel elles sont posées. Heron distingue également des opérations similaires de la couleur-lumière dans les œuvres de Soulages et de de Staël chez qui, écrit-il « à l’intérieur de l’architecture picturale […] se trouvent, pour ainsi dire, des nids d’une forme plus compliquée, qui sont logés à l’intérieur de la structure nonfigurative bord à bord [all-over] de la composition. » 19 Les quatre artistes ont d’ailleurs à différents moments de leur carrière célébré l’exemple de Rembrandt, tandis que leurs œuvres (particulièrement celles de 1955–1957 pour Soulages, du début de la décennie pour

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Hartung ou les petites natures mortes semi-abstraites de de Staël en 1954–1955) ont pu à l’occasion manifester le dialogue entretenu avec l’œuvre gravé du peintre hollandais.

D’autre part, la gestualité expressionniste est absente de leur peinture, malgré des apparences parfois contraires, sauf peut-être dans ces « tableaux plus vides, plus faciles » de la fin de la vie de de Staël que Heron critique violemment dans l’article monographique qu’il consacre à l’artiste en 1956 (il cite en particulier « ce tableau de mouettes si choquant » dans laquelle on reconnaît Les Mouettes, de 1955) 20. Le remplissage bord à bord de la toile dans les tableaux du tournant des années 1940– 1950, particulièrement appréciés par Heron, manifeste explicitement que ceux-ci sont le résultat d’une entreprise de construction à l’aide d’éléments plastiques coordonnés et mûris. Le caractère monumental 21 des traces des instruments utilisés par Soulages pour couvrir la surface ou la creuser (notamment en la raclant à partir de 1957– 1958) donne à celles-ci un caractère particulièrement décidé, loin de la spontanéité incontrôlée, ce que loue d’ailleurs Heron, qui note que « la vitesse des coups de brosse de Soulages a toujours été mesurée. » 22 Quant à Hartung, on sait bien désormais que ses peintures sont en réalité dé-gestualisées, pour ainsi dire, par le processus distancié qui leur a donné naissance – ce qu’Annie Claustres a nommé un « secret d’atelier » 23 et qui n’était, du vivant de l’artiste, partagé que par Soulages. Lorsque l’artiste reprend la peinture, après la guerre qui l’a rendu partiellement infirme, il transpose en effet ses aquarelles des années 1930 sur des formats plus grands, puis, à partir de 1948, il réalise des centaines de pastels qui constituent une réserve de compositions qu’il transfère par mise au carreau, parfois après des années, sur des tableaux dont les fonds ont été préalablement préparés par ses assistants, qui y laissent en réserve ou en silhouette les espaces à remplir, avec des gestes calculés pour être isomorphes à ceux de l’étude de départ. C’est d’ailleurs ce qui leur donne leur caractère de programme systématique d’exécution en plusieurs opérations distinctes et étagées spatialement sur la composition, par exemple, dans les tableaux du tournant des années 1940–1950, du fond uni à des badigeons rectangulaires, à des structures sombres et à l’animation par des taches de couleur (une tache jaune dans le cas de T 1949-4 (cat. no.12), par exemple).

De même, chez Heron, dans un tableau comme Vertical Strokes : 1956, (cat. no.2) pourtant peint avec une peinture très diluée qui parsème la surface de projections en gouttes et où la soudaineté avec laquelle l’artiste a levé sa brosse au bout de chaque application fait apparaître un peu partout des plumetis de couleur, la composition a un caractère très délibéré, à partir de badigeons de fond avec plusieurs couleurs lumineuses sur lesquels sont posés, l’un après l’autre de façon à tresser un maillage lâche, des rectangles de couleurs qui créent un rythme équilibré sur la toile : les petits morceaux de toile vierge qui subsistent dans la partie inférieure droite montrent

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que cette opération s’est effectuée selon un remplissage méthodique, depuis le coin supérieur gauche, avant de parvenir à un équilibre satisfaisant.

Pour ces artistes, il ne s’agit cependant pas de s’enfermer dans un équilibre prédéterminé, qui aurait un caractère par trop contraignant : ils tiennent plus que tout à ce que l’espace pictural qu’ils créent soit aussi vivant que celui dans lequel ils se meuvent (et où nous nous mouvons). Et cela même lorsque, comme Soulages et Hartung, la source de leur peinture ne se trouve jamais dans un objet qu’ils ont pu observer ni même dans une sensation dont ils voudraient rendre l’équivalent (ce qui n’est évidemment pas le cas de de Staël ou de Heron) 24. Comme l’explique Soulages en 1954 : « L’espace est une dynamique de l’imagination, il n’y a aucune raison d’appauvrir une poétique, je veux dire une peinture, en le refusant. Un refus de ce genre a été expliqué parfois par des raisons d’ordre pratique, d’ordre fonctionnel : le respect du mur, par exemple […]. Mais je pense qu’une peinture vraiment vécue, sans contrainte arbitraire, sans parti pris artificiel, tient compte de l’espace qui est le nôtre, précisément en créant le sien propre. » 25 La conception de l’espace pictural de de Staël et de Heron possède une racine commune, en ce qu’elle s’est nourrie de la fréquentation de Braque (sans jamais montrer un grand intérêt pour Picasso). Lorsqu’il se rend à Londres en juillet 1950, de Staël, qui a rencontré Braque dès 1944, en profite pour rendre visite à Varangeville à celui qu’il considère comme « le plus grand des peintres vivants de ce monde » 26.

Quant à Heron, qui écrit sur Braque en 1946 à l’occasion de l’exposition de celui-ci à Londres, il visite son atelier parisien en 1949 et le désigne alors comme « la plus grande figure de la peinture aujourd’hui » 27; il écrira souvent sur son œuvre. L’une des particularités de la peinture de Braque est d’avoir mis l’accent sur la possibilité de créer en peinture, donc sur une surface plane, non seulement « un espace visuel » mais aussi « un espace tactile », voire « un espace manuel », pour reprendre la nomenclature qu’il explicite au début des années 1950 28. Heron a perçu les qualités quasi contradictoires de cette conception de l’espace, en ce que celui-ci vient vers les spectateurs en même temps qu’il invite ceux-ci à le pénétrer : « Les minces lavis se déposent sur la surface grumeleuse comme une tache mate ; et une opacité de pierre devient la vision. » 29 Il emploiera les mêmes adjectifs à propos des tableaux fondés sur un module de peinture posée en épais carrés, peints par de Staël en 1951–1952. Une douzaine d’œuvres de ce type est montrée chez Matthiesen en 1952, principalement des petits formats, paysages abstraits ou natures mortes avec bouteilles ou pommes, mais aussi le monumental Les Toits (1951–1952, Centre Pompidou / Musée national d’art moderne), qui était alors titré Paysage et que de Staël désigne comme Ciel de Dieppe dans une lettre à Denys Sutton de mai 1952 30. En 1956,

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il soulignera l’emploi par de Staël de « touches plates, plus ou moins carrées, de pigments grumeleux » 31.

On pourrait dire que ses quelques tableaux où disparaît provisoirement la figuration explicite, réalisés pendant l’été 1952 (cat. no.1), sont littéralement des « de Staël » sur « Braque », avec lequel il entretient déjà un très fort dialogue pictural depuis la fin des années 1940. Ainsi Square Leaves (Abstract): July 1952 part-il d’une vue d’intérieur avec une nature morte similaire à celle de Femme à sa toilette, un tableau peint par Braque en 1942 qu’il avait particulièrement admiré en 1946, dont il retient la nature morte à la cruche sous une fenêtre (en supprimant la figure qui se trouvait à gauche dans le tableau de Braque) ; il place par-dessus, sans plus recourir aux réseaux de « lignes » de l’artiste français qui avaient été pour lui une féconde source d’inspiration dans ses intérieurs de 1950–1951 32, des rectangles de couleur unie épais tout droit tirés des tableaux de de Staël, auquel il imprime cependant un rythme dynamique diagonal qui lui est propre (particulièrement visible dans les assonances de rouge). La silhouette de la cruche empruntée à Braque, dont il avait fait en 1951 le thème principal d’une conférence sur l’artiste 33, est recouverte d’un paquet de peinture blanche posé au couteau, emprunté à de Staël.

De même reprend-il le modèle de la nature morte typique des œuvres de Braque des années 1940 (ici un bouquet) dans un tableau réalisé au mois d’août, qu’il recouvre, au couteau à palette, d’un assemblage de larges carrés pâteux qui rappelle celui de Bouteilles, harmonie en rose et bleu (1952) de de Staël, exposé chez Matthiesen. Il inverse simplement le processus pour donner un mouvement latéral à sa composition : chez de Staël, les plages de couleurs vives des objets sont posées sur un fond de taches informes, chez Heron des objets sombres disparaissent presque complètement sous une mosaïque de rectangles très clairs.

S’il a alors le sentiment d’avoir abandonné la figuration – il y revient d’ailleurs très vite – il n’est pas loin de de Staël, qui montre d’ailleurs son dédain pour la distinction entre figuration et abstraction, en donnant des titres figuratifs à nombre de ses tableaux de l’exposition chez Matthiesen, pour la première fois depuis longtemps, à côté d’autres qu’il baptise simplement Compositions. Les mots employés par Denys Sutton dans le catalogue de l’exposition – « de Staël a établi dans ces œuvres sa foi dans un monde tangible nourri par la lumière. Il a créé des ‘vues’ qui existent dans cette pénombre brumeuse qui apparaît quand la réalité et le rêve se mêlent. 34 » – pourraient tout à fait s’appliquer aux œuvres de Heron qui en découlent (non sans quelque maladresse).

Heron revient pleinement à l’abstraction avec Vertical : January 1956 (Tate Gallery), dont Mel Gooding a montré qu’elle est la « première peinture

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de cette période à être pleinement assurée dans sa revendication d’une manière nonfigurative » 35. Ce changement a été préparé par la vision de l’exposition personnelle à Londres de Soulages : Winter Harbour : 1955 pose ainsi sur un paysage de bord de mer une structure faite d’une épaisse grille noire, blanche et grise disjointe, directement inspirée par l’exemple de Soulages, comme l’artiste l’affirmera en 1957 à propos des premières de ses Garden Paintings 36. On peut penser en particulier que Peinture 81 × 59 cm, 15 octobre 1954, avec sa structure en noir, brun et blanc sur un fond bleu, a pu lui suggérer cette solution, à laquelle il ôte sa référence figurative dans White Vertical : May 1956 (Black) (cat. no.4) ou dans Green on Blacks : 1956 (cat. no.3), y employant une palette qui lui est propre, fondée respectivement sur des nuances de blanc sur un fond noir et une opposition entre le noir et des couleurs vives (des badigeons multicolores sur le fond, des rehauts verts vifs par-dessus l’assemblage de barres verticales noires).

Soulages n’a pas cessé de revendiquer son opposition à la présence sur ses tableaux de toute trace d’un spectacle observé. En 1953 cependant, dans ce qui est alors sa déclaration publique la plus accessible, il donne à cette opposition une formulation plus ambiguë, qui a pu conforter Heron : « Si par la figuration une peinture introduit des rapports de terme à terme avec le monde, la peinture qui n’est pas figurative introduit d’autres relations ; pour le spectateur comme pour le peintre, le monde est non plus regardé mais vécu, il est passé dans l’expérience qu’ils en ont.

Cette expérience s’éprouve elle-même à travers les significations qui, par elle, viennent se faire et se défaire sur la toile. Ainsi cette peinture qui se prive de la représentation est cernée par le monde et lui doit son sens 37. » Même si Heron déclare trouver dans ses tableaux de 1956–1957 « un sens de la liberté qui m’était plus ou moins refusé tant que je devais garder l’œil sur un ‘sujet’ » 38, il n’en maintient pas moins un lien, quoique ne relevant plus de l’imitation mais de l’émulation, avec les sensations éprouvées dans la nature, en particulier celle qu’il fréquente à St Ives, au bord de la mer. Il y a là un autre lien direct avec de Staël, les deux artistes ayant d’ailleurs fréquenté les mêmes paysages du Sud de la France et s’en étant inspirés. Heron a séjourné à Ménerbes et à Antibes pendant l’hiver 1948– 1949 ; de Staël y a séjourné pendant plusieurs étés à partir de 1950 (dès son retour de Londres, précisément 39) avant de s’établir à Antibes pendant la dernière année de sa vie (c’est à Antibes qu’il se donne la mort en 1955). Il y a même un lien avec Hartung, qui a passé tous ses étés de 1954 à 1958 « au bord de la Méditerranée », précisant : « J’y fis alors beaucoup de photos de cailloux, mais surtout des centaines et des centaines de dessins à l’encre de Chine. Ils ont eu une forte influence sur ma peinture de cette époque où de grands signes noirs apparaissent sur des fonds de vert froid très clair, de rouge minium ou d’autres couleurs. » 40

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Après les dernières Garden Paintings, Heron rompt cependant avec toute évocation du paysage, dans sa série des Stripe Paintings, horizontales ou verticales, de 1957–1958. Il a lui-même crédité les expressionnistes abstraits américains d’avoir « insisté de manière définitive, avec une véhémence qui a depuis converti presque tout le monde, dans le monde entier, que la peinture dans sa totalité est l’unique image à laquelle on a affaire dans une peinture. » 41 Et les critiques n’ont pas cessé de comparer ses tableaux de la seconde moitié des années 1950 aux œuvres de Rothko qu’il avait pu admirer en 1956 puis en 1958 42. Ces peintures continuent pourtant un dialogue serré avec les abstractions, construites et ouvertes en même temps, de Soulages ; avec celles de Hartung (comme le montre une peinture de transition comme Lemon, Ochre, Black : January 1957 (cat. no.5), où l’apparition de rayures verticales parallèles dans la partie gauche de la composition, grattées dans le support, entretient un rapport direct avec les griffures contemporaines de Hartung) ; et même avec ces tableaux de 1952 de de Staël montrés à la Whitechapel Gallery en 1956, Ciel à Honfleur et Le Lavandou (1952, Centre Pompidou / Musée national d’art moderne), qui sont composés de barres plus ou moins épaisses et presque parallèles (la méthode de Heron pourrait en être la systématisation, rendue possible par l’affranchissement du rapport à la nature).

Elles manifestent le sens très particulier de l’espace et de la couleur du peintre britannique, dans une affinité privilégiée avec de Staël (il revient d’ailleurs à des compositions de formes rectangulaires colorées, suspendues sur un fond atmosphérique, dès 1959, qui rappellent à la fois les Multiforms de Rothko et les œuvres de la fin de la vie du peintre français). En 1951, ce dernier affirmait ainsi son ambition : « Je veux réaliser une harmonie. Je me sers d’un matériau qui est la peinture. » 43 Celle déclarée par Heron en 1955 n’est pas loin : « L’art est une révélation que l’on doit contempler – pas une exhortation qui nous pousse à l’action. » 44

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NOTES

11

1

12

Patrick Heron, propos rapportés dans une conversation de 1993 avec Mel Gooding, GOODING 1994, p.97 2 Patrick Heron, « The Americans at the Tate Gallery », Arts [New York], mars 1956, HERON 1998, p.104. Mel Gooding a souligné à quel point les sentiments de Heron à l’égard de l’expressionnisme abstrait américain étaient cependant empreints de réticence (GOODING 1994, pp.94–127) 3 Denys Sutton, compte-rendu de l’exposition de Heron à la Redfern Gallery, Financial Times, 4 mars 1958, cité GOODING 1994, p.137 4 MATISSE 1907, p.56 5 Voir GUILBAUT 1983, CHASSEY-R AMOND 2008 et CHASSEY 2014 6 ESTIENNE 1954, p.2 7 ESTIENNE 1956, p.1 8 Sur l’usage du terme pour désigner une large tendance de la peinture britannique du milieu des années 1950, voir GASKIN 2001, pp.17–54.

Malheureusement, Fiona Gaskin ne fait pas une étude raisonnée de l’usage du terme par la critique anglaise, mais se contente d’y inclure, rétrospectivement, toutes les tendances présentes dans l’exposition Metavisual, Tachiste, Abstract, qui a lieu en 1957 à la galerie Redfern de Londres 9 Patrick Heron, « The French Contemporaries », The New Statesman and Nation [Londres], 29 avril 1950, p.484. Je remercie Jean-Luc Uro, de la Fondation Hartung-Bergman, de m’avoir transmis une copie de cet article. Quelques mois auparavant, Heron avait conclu un parallèle entre les peintres britanniques et français par un sombre constat : « Il y a à peine une poignée de peintres britanniques que nous exposerions sans aucune réserve à l’étranger. » (« English and French in 1950 », The New Statesman and Nation [Londres], 7 janvier 1950, p.9) 10 Patrick Heron, « The Power of Paris », The New Statesman and Nation [Londres], 19 juillet 1952, HERON 1955, p.265

13

14

15

16

17 18

19

20 21

22 23 24

Nicolas de Staël, lettre de Londres à Françoise de Staël, 3 août 1950, STAËL 2014, p.215 Nicolas de Staël, lettre de Londres à Françoise de Staël, 31 juillet 1950, STAËL 2014, p.211 Pierre Soulages, lettre de Paris à Patrick Heron, 3 novembre 1953, partiellement citée WILSON 2001, p.10, n.10. Je dois à la célérité de Jessica Ramsay d’avoir pu consulter l’intégralité de la lettre Patrick Heron, « To me … », cat. expo. Statements – A Review of British Abstract Art in 1956, 1956, HERON 1998, p.121 Patrick Heron, « Space in Painting and Architecture », Architects’ Year Book 5 [Londres], janvier 1953, HERON 1998, p.73 Ibid., p.77. Ma traduction s’appuie sur celle qui avait été proposée par Elodie Collin dans son mémoire de maîtrise (non-publié) consacré à l’artiste, soutenu à l’Université Paris IV-Sorbonne en 1999 Patrick Heron, lettre à Clement Greenberg, 23 mai 1955, WILSON 2001, p.10 An., « Opposing Forces in Art: The Lure of Abstraction », The Times [Londres], 30 janvier 1953, CLAUSTRES 2005, p.80 Patrick Heron, « American Artists from the E. J. Power Collection / Roger Hilton », Arts [New York], mai 1958, HERON 1998, p.150 Patrick Heron, « Nicolas de Staël », The Listener [Londres], 3 mai 1956, HERON 1998, pp.109–110 Même lorsque les dimensions sont limitées, l’échelle est presque toujours monumentale chez Soulages : c’est la condition même de sa réussite Patrick Heron, « London », Arts [New York], octobre 1958, p.21 CLAUSTRES 2005, pp.57–68 Il faut noter cependant qu’à la différence de Soulages, Hartung a revendiqué une origine figurative, quoique lointaine chronologiquement, à ses compositions abstraites, écrivant par exemple à propos de ses premières peintures des années 1920 : « J’aimais mes taches. J’aimais qu’elles suffisent à créer un visage, un corps, un paysage.

Ces taches qui, peu de temps après, devaient demander leur autonomie et leur liberté entières.

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25

26 27

28

29 30

31 32

33

34 35 36 37 38

39 40 41

[…] Quelle joie ensuite de les laisser libres de jouer entre elles, d’acquérir leur propre expressivité, leurs propres relations, leur dynamisme, sans être asservies à la réalité ! » (HARTUNG 1976, p.170) Pierre Soulages, « L’espace dans la peinture », Le Disque vert [Paris], janvier-février 1954, ENCREVE 1994, p.290 Nicolas de Staël, lettre de Paris à Mme Guillou, fin février 1946, STAËL 2014, p.117 Patrick Heron, « Paris: Summer 1949 », The New Statesman and Nation [Londres], 16 juillet 1949, HERON 1998, p.37 BRAQUE 1952, p.34. Sur l’espace tactile de Braque, je me permets de renvoyer à mon étude, CHASSEY 1999, pp.31–46 Patrick Heron, « Braque », The New English Weekly [Londres], 4 juillet 1946, HERON 1998, p.13 Sur les titres successifs de Les Toits, voir Jean-Paul Ameline, « Funambulisme entre figuration et abstraction : Nicolas de Staël face à la critique », STAËL 2003, p.18 Patrick Heron, « Nicolas de Staël », op. cit. (n.20), p.110 Heron souligne « la fonction des lignes » dans Patrick Heron, « Braque », op. cit. (n.29), pp.16–17 Patrick Heron, « The Changing Jug », The Listener [Londres], 25 janvier 1951, émission télévisée BBC Third Programme, HERON 1998, pp.54–59 STAËL 1952, p.4 GOODING 1994, p.104 Patrick Heron, déclarations de 1957, WILSON 2001, pp.10–11 SOULAGES 1953, p.17 Patrick Heron, « To me … », cat. expo. Statements – A Review of British Abstract Art in 1956, 1956, HERON 1998, p.121 C’est à Ménerbes, en 1953–1954, que de Staël peint Bateau gris HARTUNG 1976, p.206. ‘T 1956-23’ est un bon exemple des œuvres dont parle l’artiste Patrick Heron, « American Artists from the E. J. Power Collection / Roger Hilton », op. cit. (n.19), p.151

42 Voir GOODING 1994, pp.121–127, 137–150 43 Nicolas de Staël, réponse à un questionnaire du MoMA de New York, mars-avril 1951, citée in Anna Hiddleston et Anne Malherbe, « Chronologie », STAËL 2003, p.92 44 Patrick Heron, « Art Is Autonomous », The Twentieth Century, septembre 1955, HERON 1998, p.95

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RÉ F É RE NCES BRAQUE 1952 : Georges Braque, Le Jour et la Nuit. Cahiers de Georges Braque 1917–1952, Paris, Gallimard, 1952 CHASSEY 1999 : Éric de Chassey, « Braque et la nature morte : tactilité littérale et virtuelle », in Françoise Cohen (dir.), cat. expo. Georges Braque : L’espace, Le Havre, Musée Malraux et Paris, Adam Biro, 1999 CHASSEY 2014 : Éric de Chassey, « Abstraction Sans Frontières », Tate Magazine [Londres], no31, été 2014 CHASSEY-R AMOND 2008 : Éric de Chassey et Sylvie Ramond (dir.), cat. expo.

Repartir à zéro, comme si la peinture n’avait jamais existé, 1945–1949, Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts / Paris, Hazan, 2008 CLAUSTRES 2005 : Annie Claustres, Hans Hartung. Les aléas d’une réception, Dijon, Les presses du réel, 2005 ENCREVE 1994 : Pierre Encrevé, Soulages. L’œuvre complet. Peintures. I. 1946–1959, Paris, Seuil, 1994 ESTIENNE 1954 : Charles Estienne, « Une révolution : Le tachisme », Combat-Art [Paris], no4, 1 er mars 1954 ESTIENNE 1956 : Charles Estienne, « Le combat et ses combattants », Combat-Art [Paris], no 33, 3 décembre 1956 GASKIN 2001 : Fiona Gaskin, « British Tachisme in the post-war period, 1946–1957 », in Margaret Garlake (dir.), Artists and Patrons in Post-War Britain, Ashgate (Courtauld Research Papers no 2), 2001 GOODING 1994 : Mel Gooding, Patrick Heron, Londres, Phaidon, 2014 [1994]

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GUILBAUT 1983 : Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War, trad. by Arthur Goldhammer, Chicago et Londres, The University of Chicago Press, 1983 [Comment New York vola l’idée d’art moderne, Nîmes, Jacqueline Chambon, 1991] HARTUNG 1976 : Hans Hartung, Autoportrait, Paris, Grasset, 1976, repris dans Franz-W. Kaiser, Anne Pontégnie et Vincente Todoli, Hartung × 3, Angers, Expressions contemporaines, 2003 HERON 1955 : Patrick Heron, The Changing Forms of Art, Londres, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1955 HERON 1998 : Patrick Heron, Painter as Critic. Patrick Heron: Selected Writings, Mel Gooding (éd.), Londres, Tate Publishing, 1998 [2001] MATISSE 1907 : Henri Matisse, in Guillaume Apollinaire, « Henri Matisse », La Phalange, no2, 15–18 décembre 1907, repris dans Écrits et propos sur l’art, Dominique Fourcade (dir.), Paris, Hermann, 1972 SOULAGES 1953 : Pierre Soulages, « Écrits d’artiste : Pierre Soulages », Cimaise [Paris], no1, novembre 1953 STAËL 1952 : Denys Sutton, introduction, cat. expo. Nicolas de Staël, Londres, Matthiesen Gallery, 1952 STAËL 2003 : Jean-Paul Ameline (dir.), cat. expo. Nicolas de Staël, Paris, Centre Pompidou, 2003 STAËL 2014 : Nicolas de Staël, Lettres. 1926–1955, Germain Viatte (dir.), Paris, Le Bruit du temps, 2014 WILSON 2001 : Andrew Wilson, « Foreword: A Transparent Gateway », cat. expo.

Patrick Heron: Early and Late Garden Paintings, St Ives, Tate Publishing, 2001

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L’ E S PAC E

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PE IN T URE

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ARCHI TEC T URE PAT R IC K H E RON

L’espace est au peintre (ainsi qu’à l’architecte sans doute) ce que le temps est au compositeur. Le rythme musical consiste en intervalles marqués dans le temps : le temps est le véhicule. Le rythme pictural consiste en intervalles spatiaux : l’espace est le véhicule. Avant que la peinture ne devienne non figurative, la configuration spatiale que le peintre agence sur sa toile consiste en des formes que l’on pourrait lire comme des références illusionnistes à des objets réels ; à savoir, des objets extérieurs au tableau. Par le biais d’une organisation précise de l’espace (ou configuration), le peintre a le sentiment de déplacer des personnes, des meubles, des bâtiments ou des arbres réels dans un sens ou dans l’autre, jusqu’à ce qu’ils se trouvent à l’endroit (la composition) qui lui semble le plus esthétique ou significatif. Se concentrant ainsi sur ces objets, ou sur leurs formes, le peintre n’a peut-être pas pleinement conscience de leur signification spatiale, de leur sens en tant que surfaces planes marquant l’espace.

Mais inconsciemment, il la ressent certainement. La connotation spatiale des formes représentées dans une peinture figurative est en effet l’un des fondements de son style ou de son caractère propre : tout peintre notoire a créé une nouvelle version de l’espace pictural. Bien que les mêmes objets puissent être représentés dans les tableaux de différents maîtres, leurs relations spatiales entre eux, par rapport à la surface picturale et au cadre, sont toujours caractéristiques de l’auteur, voire uniques.

Si l’on peut affirmer, comme je le crois, qu’un des objectifs principaux du peintre est, et a toujours été, d’organiser l’espace d’une manière nouvelle et distinctive, on peut dire que l’avènement de l’art non figuratif a marqué un changement important dans le procédé créatif. Si l’organisation de l’espace est une activité inconsciente chez le peintre figuratif, qui pense au sujet tout en en organisant les formes, elle devient un objectif conscient chez le peintre non figuratif. Pour ce dernier, l’espace est l’objet de manipulation principal : il est comprimé ou atténué, amassé ou épars, selon les besoins de l’image. Aussi, pour les peintres non figuratifs, l’espace même est devenu le sujet. Il doit être représenté sans l’intrusion d’images spécifiques d’objets réels, car cela atténuerait l’essence de l’espace, et distrairait l’observateur, par associations, de la contemplation presque mystique de ce qui est, après tout, un élément fondamental de l’univers.

Ces propos s’appliquent davantage, à mon avis, à la peinture non figurative de l’après-guerre qu’à celle de l’avant-guerre, pour des raisons que j’expliquerai plus tard. Avant la guerre, la peinture non figurative est un mouvement dont les Français sont en grande partie exclus. Les Français ont donné naissance au cubisme, qui est abstrait mais pas non figuratif. Le cubisme semble avoir absorbé toutes les énergies qui, ailleurs, ont pris des formes d’expression purement non figuratives, telles que le constructivisme, etc. Mais en 1945, la non figuration pure commence à s’imposer

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à Paris, quasiment pour la première fois. En 1950, elle est désormais l’élément clé du mouvement d’art français le plus important sans doute depuis la fondation du cubisme. J’ai initialement pris ce nouveau mouvement (qui regroupe en fait au moins quatre groupes, ou catégories, indépendant(e)s et distinct(e)s, aussi différent(e)s les un(e)s des autres que l’impressionisme l’est de l’expressionisme) pour un ultime geste futile d’outre-tombe de l’art moderne français. Je pensais qu’il ne représentait rien de plus qu’une plate récapitulation des thèmes ordinaires de l’art non figuratif européen de l’avant-guerre. Je me suis trompé. Les peintures de Singier, de Manessier ou d’Estève ne sont pas qu’une concoction décorative coquette qui émanerait d’une simple répétition des anciens thèmes non figuratifs de la peinture qui, au lieu d’atteindre la banalité impeccable et stérile digne d’un mur de salle de bain (une qualité typique de l’avant-guerre), se rapprochent beaucoup de Bonnard ou des grands peintres impressionnistes. L’empâtement plus fort, plus brut, mais non moins riche et expressif, de de Staël ou de Soulages n’était pas non plus le résultat d’un mariage arbitraire entre une « texture » presque expressionniste et, disons, Mondrian. Ces artistes au succès d’après-guerre se situent au début d’un nouveau développement en peinture qui dominera possiblement les dix ou vingt années suivantes. Mais avant de décrire les peintures des artistes, anglais comme français, les plus impressionnants au sein de cette nouvelle école de la non figuration d’après-guerre et de définir les principales différences entre celle-ci et la peinture non figurative d’avant-guerre, j’aimerais aborder un moment le sujet de l’architecture.

Lewis Mumford, dans un article récent du New Yorker dans lequel il compare Lever House au nouveau siège des Nations Unies, écrit : Lever House n’a pas les qualités sculpturales imposantes de la maçonnerie créative de Wright (le Larkin Building) ; l’édifice est, au contraire, pleinement et fièrement « une construction dans l’espace ». Il dit tout ce qui peut être dit, avec délicatesse, précision, élégance, par ses surfaces de verre, ses armatures en acier, le contraste sporadique de ses plaques de marbre ou des bases de ses surfaces élancées, mais ses vertus sont surtout visibles non dans l’enveloppe extérieure mais à l’intérieur de cette enveloppe qui lui donne vie, là où la lumière, l’espace et la couleur sont à la fois forme et ornement.

C’est dans ces dernières lignes sur « l’intérieur » auquel l’« enveloppe (…) donne vie », que M. Mumford fait allusion à ce qui me paraît être le développement le plus important des dernières décennies en architecture : le développement d’un sentiment spatial nouveau et unique. Je ne suis qu’un critique d’architecture amateur et ne prétendrai pas pouvoir expliquer ce développement. Mais en regardant récemment

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des photos de bâtiments de Mies van der Rohe, j’ai été frappé, au premier abord, par une austérité allant jusqu’à la dureté, par une franchise et une simplicité allant jusqu’à la morosité. À mes yeux, chaque trait architectural (chaque mur plein ou chaque panneau, vertical ou horizontal) était en quelque sorte trop discret, au point de chercher à s’effacer complètement en tant qu’élément esthétique concret et n’existant plus que comme une délimitation dans l’esprit du spectateur. Très tôt dans l’œuvre de Mies van der Rohe, le détail n’est réduit à rien de plus spécifique ou élaboré que l’aspect de texture des matériaux utilisés : les petites bulles du béton, les veines du marbre, le brillant du verre. Je me suis demandé ce que signifiait, esthétiquement parlant, ces panneaux neutres aux proportions parfaites mais si discrets, qui s’imbriquaient les uns dans les autres, se chevauchaient ou, montés indépendamment, se faisaient écho par leur définition harmonieuse de l’espace.

Je suis arrivé à la conclusion que leur interpénétration rectilinéaire sobre, leur anonymat parfait en tant que « murs », leur austérité sans image, tenaient à une chose en particulier : ils disparaissent parce qu’ils définissent non pas un cadre concret, dont les différents éléments formels doivent posséder cette qualité d’image et de personnalité qu’ils nient clairement, mais une configuration de l’espace. Je dis bien de l’espace et non dans l’espace, l’espace même étant le véhicule. L’espace est l’entité même, le « bâtiment » visible n’étant que ses limites visibles. L’espace en soi est la forme organique harmonieuse que l’architecte articule via les panneaux, les plafonds, les sols. En donnant forme à l’image invisible de ses volumes spatiaux, Mies van der Rohe est contraint à rendre visibles, tout au moins, ses délimitations.

Ainsi, il y parvient avec le minimum de matériaux visibles. La progression la plus frappante de sa carrière est certes cette progression du visible à l’invisible. Les panneaux nécessairement pleins restent pleins : mais ils deviennent de plus en plus transparents, jusqu’à ce qu’à Farnsworth House les murs soient entièrement en verre.

D’autres grands architectes modernes ont progressivement pris conscience de l’espace en ce sens, comme si l’espace était un bloc de pierre et l’architecte un sculpteur. Mais Mies van der Rohe me semble soit être plus attaché à l’élément spatial même, soit moins s’intéresser aux matériaux pour leur qualité intrinsèque propre.

L’agencement spatial de Wright est aussi aventureux que celle de Mies, mais Wright aime la personnalité inhérente des pleins : le lustre du verre, la densité granuleuse de la pierre, le grain du bois clair au rythme fluide, par exemple. Mies diffuse, étire et affine ces matériaux simplement pour définir, tandis que Wright les applique avec générosité et densité pour orner les définitions spatiales qu’il nous communique ce faisant.

Il y a presque un contraste parallèle en sculpture. Comparons les « constructions dans l’espace » de Naum Gabo (n’est-il pas d’ailleurs l’auteur de cette

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expression ?) à celles de Reg Butler. Les constructions en plexiglas légères, ouvertes et transparentes de Gabo suivent la définition d’un concept axé exclusivement sur l’espace. Il souhaiterait projeter ses images directement dans l’esprit du spectateur sans avoir à faire de concessions envers un matériau physique quelconque. Il voudrait se passer du matériau ; seul le concept mental compte ; il choisit donc le matériau le plus neutre, le moins existant qui soit : un plastique presque invisible, aussi dénué de qualité ou de personnalité qu’un matériau puisse l’être. Gabo évite ce plaisir sensoriel apporté par la technique, par le matériau utilisés que d’autres artistes aiment tant explorer. Reg Butler, en revanche, prend un véritable plaisir à former ses silhouettescages en fer et en acier : l’acier fondu coule, est martelé, pulvérisé, soudé, découpé à la lance thermique, etc. jusqu’à ce que le métal même porte l’empreinte de la volonté du sculpteur, révèle son toucher personnel aussi intimement que l’argile ou la cire sous la pression du pousse du modeleur. Ce qui intéresse Butler, ce n’est pas uniquement la simple projection d’une idée, l’acte de tracer une image dans l’espace. Il se soucie également du potentiel d’expression du fer et de l’acier : son but est aussi de faire s’épanouir le fer, de lui donner vie. L’architecte moderne risque de suivre Gabo plutôt que Butler sur ce point. Il n’y a aucun doute que l’espace doit être considéré presque comme une substance vivante, organique, dont la nature particulière doit être respectée. Mais il est également possible, pour définir l’espace, d’utiliser des matériaux qui dégagent une personnalité plus (plutôt que moins) intrinsèque. La cohésion d’un concept spatial ne dépend pas obligatoirement de substances incolores, transparentes et synthétiques telles que le plexiglas. Un bâtiment bien conçu doit réconcilier la nature de l’espace (le vide) et la nature du matériau (le plein).

La question de la nature du matériau (et le « respect du matériau », bien que ce soit un principe généralement reconnu de nos jours, est malgré tout d’une importance absolue) me ramène aux peintres non figuratifs contemporains dont je veux parler car, s’il y a bien une chose plus que toute autre qui distingue la peinture non figurative de l’après-guerre de celle de l’avant-guerre, c’est que les peintres de l’après-guerre utilisent la peinture à l’huile comme elle devrait toujours l’être, en profitant pleinement de la richesse de ses textures, alors que les artistes de l’avantguerre l’ignorent, appliquant la peinture comme un verre coloré ou un émail poli.

Si une telle affirmation semble trahir un parti pris de ma part (une prédilection pour la peinture épaisse plutôt que mince), je présenterai les choses autrement. La peinture non figurative de l’après-guerre s’exprime par la technique d’un mouvement libre du pinceau ou du couteau : c’est là la qualité essentielle des « gribouillages » de peinture que l’on retrouve chez Rembrandt et Vélasquez, Michel-Ange et Rubens, Titien et Piero della Francesca, Cézanne et Delacroix. La peinture non figurative

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de l’avant-guerre postule un tel degré de détachement impersonnel qu’elle implique nécessairement une facture timide, restreinte, sans rythme, qui semble presque nier sa propre nature en tant que facture. Les surfaces lisses, froides, nettes et dures de Mondrian, Nicholson, Hélion, Tauber-Arp, Miró et Kandinsky (ces deux derniers, bien sûr, ne peuvent pas être qualifiés de peintres non figuratifs, mais leurs œuvres s’inscrivent dans l’esthétique commune de l’époque ; celle que je veux définir ici) sont, de plus, un facteur qui va à l’encontre de la réalisation d’un sentiment d’espace. Tous ces artistes se sont efforcés d’éliminer de leurs surfaces ce que j’appelle la « vibration de l’espace ». La surface lisse mécanique étouffe la force illusionniste d’une surface peinte. La peinture constructiviste recherche ces deux qualités : le lisse et l’absence de référence illusionniste à toute réalité autre que celle de la surface peinte elle-même.

Le critère d’excellence de peintres tels que Nicholson ou Mondrian est précisément que la fonction figurative en peinture doit être totalement éliminée de sorte que le tableau ne puisse être considéré que comme une fin en soi, un objet à part entière.

Cet idéal réduit la peinture au bas-relief, une logique que Nicholson suivra jusqu’au bout. Cela rejette, cependant, la fonction la plus élémentaire de l’art pictural, à savoir sa capacité à représenter les objets autres que lui-même : la magie inhérente à la peinture, son pouvoir unique résident dans l’effet illusionniste de toute image appliquée à une surface plane. Cette qualité d’illusion de sentiment de configuration spatiale qui existe derrière (et parfois devant) la surface du tableau est inséparable de la notion d’espace (lui-même illusoire en peinture, mais réel en sculpture). La moindre trace d’une ligne sur une surface blanche introduit un sentiment de récession (d’une forme imagée sortant ou se retirant de l’endroit où la surface blanche marquée se trouve). L’espace est donc le « véhicule » qui permet à la configuration picturale d’exister.

Une autre distinction par conséquent très importante entre, par exemple, Mondrian et Soulages est que le peintre de l’après-guerre reconnaît cette nécessité spatiale dans la peinture alors que l’artiste de l’avant-guerre cherche à l’ignorer.

Il y a une conscience plastique immensément puissante chez Soulages comme chez de Staël. Ils n’expriment pas seulement un sens de l’espace, d’un espace sensible voire tangible ; ils expriment des formes dans l’espace – même si cela ne nous rend pas conscients de l’identité réelle de ces formes. […]. Nous pressentons leurs formes, leurs volumes organisés dans l’espace comme étant quelque chose au-delà de la toile, avec son incrustation épaisse de pigments. Si cette nouvelle non figuration française, maintenant qu’elle est établie, est bien plus convaincante en tant que peinture que le langage dont j’ai parlé ci-dessus, c’est peut-être parce que ces peintres n’ont pas pu oublier les leçons du cubisme. Le cubisme est l’exact opposé de cette forme d’art

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idéaliste (le constructivisme) qui sépare le visuel du sens : j’ai mentionné l’exemple des designs à peine visibles de Gabo ; mais on ne peut pas dire que Mondrian aimait vraiment la peinture. Le cubisme, avec son amour du concret, fait l’éloge de la peinture, de la toile, du papier, de la craie ainsi que des verres à vin, des tables et des guitares. Cet amour sensoriel du matériau est d’une importance cruciale pour Soulages, de Staël et, en Angleterre, pour William Scott, Alan Davie, Roger Hilton, Peter Lanyon (que j’inclus ici malgré ses tableaux figuratifs, qui font référence de façon indirecte à son expérience des objets naturels), Victor Pasmore et Terry Frost.

On pourrait appeler l’époque actuelle l’époque de la non figuration « épaisse » (par opposition à « mince »). Non seulement ces contemporains utilisent la peinture avec plus de générosité, et obtiennent ainsi cette qualité de grain dans leurs surfaces qui crée cette « vibration de l’espace » (qui, bien sûr, est aussi une vibration de la lumière), que les constructivistes de l’avant-guerre, mais leurs œuvres ont un rythme plus fort, plus de poids et une pulsation plus persistante. Là où les peintures de l’avantguerre étaient géométriques, précises et trop soignées, celles de l’après-guerre sont organiques, primitives et brutes.

La non figuration de l’avant-guerre est dominée par la précision mathématique de l’exécution et par un mode d’invention particulièrement conceptuel. L’après-guerre tire ses non figurations beaucoup plus libres de sources sensorielles et les affirme de telle sorte que l’on est assailli par leur vigueur physique et leur force libre et intuitive, perceptuelles plutôt que conceptuelles dans leur mode d’expression. Une peinture noir et blanc de Mondrian est un signe qui pourrait être lu : l’exaltation vient du sens et le sens est au-delà de la peinture qui reste neutre en tant qu’objet, le simple véhicule passif d’une idée. Une peinture noir et blanc de William Scott (d’un point de vue superficiel, la structure rectiligne se rapproche beaucoup d’un Mondrian) n’est pas une carte, un graphique ou une affirmation de valeurs au-delà d’elle-même : elle n’est pas un moyen de nous transmettre quelque chose autre qu’elle-même ; il ne s’agit pas, comme dans un Mondrian, d’un essai sur la forme ou la proportion.

La peinture est une entité vivante, entièrement organique et par conséquent unique.

Elle est en soi un fait sensoriel concret, qui utilise de la peinture. Elle crée un espace qui émane directement de ses formes, non pas tant par des références à des objets sans importance que par une référence à l’espace même. L’espace est l’objet représenté, bien qu’il est vrai que cela donne momentanément à l’espace un air de meuble épineux.

Patrick Heron a écrit cet essai en janvier 1953. Celui-ci a été initialement publié en tant qu’article dans Architects’ Year Book 5, Trevor Dannatt (éd.), Elek Books, Londres, 1953, et réimprimé dans ‘Space in Contemporary Painting and Architecture’, in Patrick Heron: The Changing Forms of Art, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Londres, 1955, pp.40–51. Le texte original a été plus tard publié de nouveau dans Painter as Critic – Patrick Heron: Selected Writings, Mel Gooding (éd.), Tate Gallery Publishing, Londres, 1998, pp.73–78 PATRICK HE RON 123

Waddington Custot would like to thank Patrick Heron’s family for their invaluable assistance in the organisation of this exhibition We would also like to thank Éric de Chassey for his introduction to this catalogue and all those who have kindly lent work to this exhibition

V IBR AT ION OF SPACE HE RON , DE S TAËL , HART UNG , SOUL AGES 25 May – 9 July 2016 Waddington Custot 11 Cork Street, London, W 1S 3LT Telephone +44 20 7851 2200 mail@waddingtoncustot.com www.waddingtoncustot.com Monday to Friday 10 am–6 pm Saturday 10 am–1.30 pm Designed by Praline (Al Rodger and David Tanguy) Printed by Conti Tipocolor © Waddington Custot, London, 2016 Published by Waddington Custot Co-ordinated by Clare Preston and Jessica Ramsay ISBN-978-0-9576612-8-8

p.6 © Serge Vandercam. Rights reserved. Musée de la Photographie à Charleroi, Belgium p.11 © Tate, London 2016 p.39 image courtesy of Daniel Katz Gallery, London pp.20–23 and pp.43–48 reproduced with permission of the Estate of Patrick Heron All works and texts by Patrick Heron © The Estate of Patrick Heron. All rights reserved 2016 All works by Nicolas de Staël, Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2016