- In 1979 began the adventure in your life of black alone, of the brutality of black, black on black, which is no longer black...-Brutality? No, really not- since it's no longer black! We called it noir-lumière ("luminous black"), from the title of my 1966 exhibition at the MAMVP. We also could have called it "outre-noir" ("beyond black"), a term invented along the lines of the French expression "Outre-Rhin" ("beyond the Rhine" to mean Germany) or "Outre-Manche" ("beyond the Channel" to mean Britain), to designate another country than that of black. Outre-noir - another mental filed than that of black.
- Black has long symbolised evil, the devil, terror, it was the colour for the clergy and undertakers, pirates...
-(...) A colour of celebration and in our culture that of mourning. But painting has nothing to do with these symbols, which moreover contradict each-other from culture to culture, and even within each culture. (...) And speaking of my "outre-noir" paintings, in this regard Jean Nouvel said in an interview I cam across: "He lifted a veil. Thanks to him we see that black and shadow only exist in relation to light. To question and to read such a work, one must put the freedom of our looking to the test of imagination.".
- I believe you don't like the night, the blackness of the night; it's a paradox. But do you often work at night?
-(...) I don't say I like the black of night, quite the contrary. I like the silence of the night, it's like that of snow. I have always very much liked the total night of caves, and we mustn't forget that black was at the origins of painting; for a long time I only knew Pech Merle, and after we discovered Lascaux (17.000 years-old). Now we know Chauvet (31.000 years-old).
For over 300 centuries Man has gone to the darkest places of the earth, the absolute black of caves, to paint. And to paint with black. (...).
Conversation of Michel Ragon with Pierre Soulages, 2009, Thalia édition, Paris.
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