ABSTRACT

Every December all eyes in the London contemporary art scene swivel to the Turner Prize exhibition at the Tate Britain. In 2009 the four short-listed artists were Enrico David, Roger Hiorns, Lucy Skaer and Richard Wright. In exactly the same way as Braque, Soulages presents painting as poetic - but never the painting as any specific poem. In 1962 Pierre Soulages was interviewed for a communist student magazine. His interviewer was plainly determined to get Soulages to say what message his painting was intended to convey to the public. The law of the interart aesthetic, concerning the timeless and international validity of the work of art, Soulages expresses in the same way as Whistler. The music of the proportions of architecture inspired him to be a painter. Whistler, like Soulages, like Apollinaire, appeals to poetry and music, but rejects literature as story-telling or anecdote.