These pages do not seek to explain, but to linger: beside the black of Pierre Soulages, beside the silence of Ezio Bosso.
I invite you to play Bosso and enjoy the dark use of Soulanges whilst reading this brief text.
Somewhere in the distance, a black canvas broods, deprived of visible details, unspoken to the eyes of the distant observer. Here is a musician silent in front of a grand piano, contemplating notes yet to be pressed, unheard by the impatient listener.
Yet when the observer steps into the painting’s intimacy, hues, depth, and essential details are revealed through layers of black. The magic of a master of emotions producing a symphony upon layers of darkness, creating colours through the absence of colours. So narrowing towards the edge of Soulanges brushstrokes and gazing down the abyss of its emotions, reminds us of lights and tinctures we might have forgotten.
So too, when the listener awaits patiently the masterful hand lingering before the black-and-white keyboard, when they taste the sound of that missing note and that suspenseful silence, then their heart is transported into a cacophony of emotions; a tiphon of sound emerges from that prolonged stillness. So Enzo Bosso makes us travel to the diversity of sounds through the mastery of its absence - Silence.
What truly unfolds before us is not emptiness, but a form of abundance held in reverse. In Pierre Soulanges, black does not shut the door on the world of emotions: it delays it, gathers it, like a gentleman, calmly opens the door to a world about to come.
His surfaces do not stand simply before us, but they interrogate our souls through absence. It is through the layers of the black, the so-called non-colour, that we discover a world of lights lurking behind. At first, we face flatness. But when we gently ask the canvas to become intimate with it, we discover light sensually surfacing the curves of the blackness.
Something similar befalls us in the silences of Ezio Bosso. Music is not interrupted in that lingering moment, but welcomed. We are told to wait, to seduce the sounds that are about to come. Some melodies are done to surprise us. But Ezio decides to make us wait, test our patience, and see whether we are ready to invite music into our souls. It is the missing note that tells us what is about to come. We are seduced by that moment. Like an alluring lover sparks our desires, we are not seduced through obviousness, but through withdrawal, through the kind absence that lingers in front of us.
Many artists add. Soulanges and Bosso decided to remove instead. They do not overwhelm us with presence, but they teach us how real presence may truly arise from what first appears austere, severe, sometimes withheld, or also almost absent.
To look at one and to listen to the other is to be reminded that depth never reveals itself abruptly, all at once. It waits to be invited into our hearts. It asks us to linger patiently long enough to hear, transforming what seemed mute into an eloquent symphony.
Black, then, is not an ending, nor silence an absence, but a threshold. Soulages and Bosso ask only that we remain long enough to feel it open.
Being self-taught or formally trained doesn’t really matter. What matters is whether the work comes from observation and intent, or from imitation.
Masterpiece!!