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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Allison Stewart and a disclaimer, I only took one semester of French in school, so I will do my very best. Dubbed the Painter of Black and Light, French artist Pierre Soulages was famous for his sleek abstract work that showed the depth and versatility of one hue, black. In his lifetime, he became one of the few contemporary artists to have a show at the Louvre.

In 2014, François Hollande, the former president of France, called him "The world's greatest living artist." A new career retrospective commemorates the one-year anniversary of Soulages's death. He passed on October 25th at the age of 102 years old. It's titled Pierre Soulages: From Midnight to Twilight, spanning on two large floors with works on loan from the Guggenheim, the Met, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Each painting was chosen for its historical significance. For example, a section of the show is dedicated to Soulages's Outrenoir, beyond black paintings, and it includes rare work such as a 1953 canvas that Nelson Rockefeller acquired.

The show is on view through November 4th at the Lévy Gorvy Dayan Gallery on 64th Street between 5th and Madison Ave. A review of the show from The Guardian says, "From Midnight to Twilight makes a considerable case for why Soulages deserves to be honored by major US art institutions and it also shows an artist whose work has endured offering much to those creating art today." Lévy Gorvy Dayan, founder and partner, Dominique Lévy, remained close friends with the artist for many years and curated the exhibition in collaboration with his widow, Colette, to whom he was married for 80 years. Dominique, nice to meet you.

Dominique Lévy: Hi, Alison. Nice to meet you.

Alison Stewart: What did you know you wanted this show to be?

Dominique Lévy: That's such a good question. I wanted the show to be an homage to Pierre, but a love letter to Pierre, and a love letter to Pierre and his wife. I wanted the exhibition to be a thank you. I've had the privilege to work with this artist for over 10 years before his passing, and I felt it was time for a recognition in a very large scale. It was very much an homage.

Alison Stewart: What pieces did you know you wanted to have and to acquire? As I said, you have loans in from the Met, the Guggenheim, the Art Institute of Chicago.

Dominique Lévy: It's an interesting story, Alison, because I wanted this exhibition to be a standing ovation. As soon as I came back from the extraordinary funeral, national funeral in Paris last year in November, I started calling museums to see which institution would lend us painting. Something quite extraordinary happened. Most institutions said, "Oh, you know what? We will show our work by Pierre. Oh, we will bring up our works by Pierre Soulages."

Suddenly, what was going to be a gallery standing ovation, I think, became a much larger standing ovation because most museum, if you go now to MoMA, if you go to the Carnegie, if you go to LACMA, you will see masterpiece of Pierre Soulages hanged in their gallery. It made our hunting a bit more difficult, but we managed to gather over 30 works from private collection, from museums, from institutions. What I wanted was to have every decade of this long productive life represented. I wanted the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, up to today represented

Alison Stewart: For people, I would love to do a little biographical information about Pierre, if you don't mind. He was born in France just a year after World War I ended. How did the aftermath of the war affect his childhood and his perspective of the world?

Dominique Lévy: He was a Christmas baby. He was born on December 24, which I think has always been a funny anecdote. His father died when he was five. He was raised by his mother and a sister. From early, early age, he loved the drawing. Already, at age seven, he explored painting and drawing and any kind of alchemy, but really is at age 16 that when he saw reproduction of prehistorical cave, he suddenly understood, and he says, and I quote, "That's how I started thinking about art." It's fascinating to think that as soon as men came into existence, he started painting.

Alison Stewart: I have to think about that for a minute. Wow.

Dominique Lévy: I know. We all do. Actually, pre-historic and grottos and primary color and the famous grotto of Lascaux were always at the heart of Pierre. When he introduced color-- All through his life, he goes down to and he goes back to prehistoric sculpture, prehistoric pigments, painting. That's at the heart of his creative language.

Alison Stewart: What formal training did he have?

Dominique Lévy: Very little. In 1938, when he was 18, he moved to Paris, and he wanted to train as a drawing teacher. Then, he wanted to take the exam for the École nationale supérieure. He was accepted and then decided not to go. He felt any formal training was about rules and rules were made to be broken. At the time, very soon, after he met the extraordinary artist Picabia, who told him, "You have the best painting at the independent salon." Soulages told him, "It's because I broke all the rules." His formal training was close to non-existing.

Alison Stewart: As we're having this conversation about his biography and his timeline, I want to point out that there's a timeline within this show. Why was that important to you to include?

Dominique Lévy: You very rarely have the chance to work with an artist who has 80 years of productivity and 102 years of brain and mind and language and conversation and stories and met all of these artists and museum curators, so we did what's called in our jargon a comparative chronology. That is we detailed Pierre from his birth to his death.

Aside, you see what's happening into the world from major event like Second World War to the beginning of computer, to anything you can imagine and what's happening in the art world. For example that in 1952, Jackson Pollock had his first exhibition in France. We tried to parallel what's happening. It gives you very much 80 years of history to place and understand the work of this man in a certain context,

Alison Stewart: We're discussing Pierre Soulages From Midnight to Twilight at the Lévy Gorvy Dayan Gallery. My guest is Dominique Lévy. When we think about his work, people immediately think about black. He has said, "When light is reflected on black, it transforms and transmuted. It opens a mental field all of its own." What does his approach to the color black, what does it offer the viewer?

Dominique Lévy: It's interesting because you call him the painter of black, and I would say he's the painter of light. Pierre started the '50s and '60s using color and being much more classically called an abstract expressionism, but always bringing primary colors, ochres, red, blues that you could find in these old pray historical grottos, primary color, what came from pigment.

Then, in the late '70s, he realized that everything he was doing was about the light. He felt a painting was more a wall than a window. Therefore, it's all about how these paintings absorb and reject every possible color. Truly, he used more black than the legendary [unintelligible 00:07:45]. In the black, you can see every single color, but for him, it was about how it absorb and reflects.

Alison Stewart: I love there's a video of children looking at his work and they asked the children, "Is that black? Is that just black?" They say, "No. No." They see so much in the art, which I thought was so interesting because their minds are so open and they haven't-- someone hasn't told them, "Oh, that's just black." They're just experiencing the art and it's really kind of a beautiful moment.

Dominique Lévy: Look, I think one of the most joyful moment in this exhibition is standing downstairs and listening to people coming in. I've actually heard that from mostly every visitor because if you give yourself the time and you give your eye the time to adapt to the black, you're going to see the blues, the red, and the whites coming through the black. You're also going to see because you use mostly acrylic, you're going to see differences in math and shine and texture.

These paintings become sculpture, become paintings, become playing with your eyes, and you really don't see anything and yet see everything. It's pure abstraction, but it's like a symphony of matte and shiny and it's like an archeology. You go digging into the painting to find something luminous. It's all but black.

Alison Stewart: He works in other mediums though, not just acrylic. Correct?

Dominique Lévy: Correct. Absolutely. At the beginning of his life, it was mostly oil painting. He then was an alchemist. He used something called walnut oil. It's something that we used to clean and restore furniture. He used that on paper and on canvas because the fluidity of the brown were, again, dancing with the light and playing tricks with him.

In America, Jasper Johns used ink on mylar, so he used [unintelligible 00:09:37] Actually, one of the first painting that was purchased by John Sweeney at the time, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art and at the Guggenheim and an instrumental figure in Soulages's career purchased [unintelligible 00:09:52] which is currently at the Museum of Modern Art.

Alison Stewart: When you say someone is an instrumental person and particularly in Pierre's career, what does that mean exactly? How does that change his career?

Dominique Lévy: James Sweeney, a legendary name in the art world, comes to Paris and unannounced knock at Soulages's studio. I think it was in 1948 and Soulages is young and starting, and he meets John Sweeney. John Sweeney purchased a work for him. Then, all through his career, John Sweeney introduced him to his major American dealer, Kutz. John Sweeney when he was director of the Guggenheim puts Soulages into a key exhibition and buys a major painting, which you would see here at the gallery because the Guggenheim was generous enough to lend this exhibition.

John Sweeney introduced him to what's called the Young European Painter Exhibition that travels all through America. Then, one of the key moment or two key moments in Pierre Soulages life, when Sweeney becomes director of the Houston Museum in '66, he does a very important retrospective and gives Soulages all of the gallery. Soulages starts a revolution by suspending paintings rather than hanging painting against the wall. Imagine paintings floating in this-- one at the gallery presented like this, suspended in the middle of space.

Then, last but not least, we believe it's thanks to Sweeney that Soulages was awarded the same year as Ellsworth Kelly, another American giant, the Carnegie Prize in Pittsburgh in 1964. Sweeney was instrumental.

Alison Stewart: How was Soulages received by art critics?

Dominique Lévy: When is the question. When at the time.

Alison Stewart: At the beginning of his career, let's say at the beginning.

Dominique Lévy: In Europe, he was incredibly well received, but always battled and questioned like anything new. In America, it took a bit more time because he was in a way battling after the war with the American post-war art, particularly artists like Franz Kline and there were big debates of who was first, who was first.

I think that slowly, because of his presence in American Museum, American collection, because of Kutz and Sweeney, and because of his recognition in a global way, he got the imperial price. He got the Carnegie price. Little by little, the critic understood.

What was difficult, though, is because this is a man who never stopped. This is a man who never abided by one style. This is a man who pushed and pushed and pushed. It was hard for critic and the academia to follow his energy, particularly the break in 1979 when painting stopped having any color or very rare colors, where he came to that revelation. I think it's a true revelation called Beyond Black. It took time for the public, for the museum, for the critics to understand what was there.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Dominique Lévy. We're talking about Pierre Soulages, From Midnight to Twilight at the Lévy Gorvy Dayan Gallery. This is on view through November 4th, by the way. I want to know more about the 1953 canvas that Nelson Rockefeller acquired when he visited in Paris. Tell us more about the piece.

Dominique Lévy: There's different piece because as soon as John Sweeney introduced Rockefeller, who was this big patron of the art, over the years, he acquired at least three paintings by Pierre Soulages. We're lucky to have two of them at the show. One extraordinary early painting that still belongs to the Rockefeller [bleeping] Foundation, sorry, and which hasn't been seen by the public in over 20 years.

The other one, which belongs to the collection of J.P. Morgan and actually J.P. Morgan owns two extraordinary Pierre Soulages, one at the headquarters in Paris, a monumental red fabulous painting of the '50s, and then, the painting that we have here at the gallery, which also has not been seen in over 20 years. There are pictures of Rockefeller in front of these paintings. I think Rockefeller was one of the very early American patron of Pierre. We are very proud to see these two paintings, which, by the way haven't been reunited since 40 years.

Alison Stewart: I also want to point out to people that when you come in to see the show, one of the first things you see is one of the hanging paintings.

Dominique Lévy: Correct.

Alison Stewart: Tell us about which one we see.

Dominique Lévy: You see a painting that Pierre made when he was 100 years old. We chose that painting as a suspended painting first to homage to this incredible invention. I don't know any other painter who suspended their paintings in the middle of the room. This was an invention in the '60s, and it was an answer to performance art, to minimalism.

That painting is so special because when you look at it from front, you feel the vigor, the force, the energy of a 20-year-old or a 30-year-old young man. Then, you see the back of the canvas when you go behind, and you see the frail signature of a man who's 100 years old. We felt it was an important painting to defy the classic way of installing.

Alison Stewart: It looks so beautiful because you've got the red floor and the white classical environment. Share with us a little bit about how you thought about showing the work, because obviously, as we came in, so much thought put into the first painting

Dominique Lévy: That's so nice of you. Yes. There was a lot of thoughts put in the installation. We felt that we wanted to give the biggest floor to this series called [unintelligible 00:15:43], I call the revelation or the revolution since 1979, because I find them to be so relevant and contemporary today.

We were called by young artists. We had a visit of a DJ. We have photographers coming and they all feel connected with this painting. Actually, young children, anyone can feel connected. They're so atemporal and they speak to light. They speak to somber. They speak to weight. They speak to majestic and they speak to intimacy. We felt that had to be the ground floor.

Then, upstairs, the rooms are more classic with more classic windows. We felt, "Okay." This is where we are going to put, what I would call, the more historical paintings of Pierre, the '50s and the '60s where he belongs completely to the language of the time. These are looked up more as historical painting than less of a revolution.

Alison Stewart: It's so exciting to think of someone continuing to paint at 100 years old. As you knew him as a friend and as a colleague, what inspired him to keep working?

Dominique Lévy: Soulages was never tired. There's this wonderful Irish poet, David Whyte. He says, "The best remedy against exhaustion is not rest. It's wholeheartedness." I think Soulages is one of the great example of this. Soulages went to the studio every day all the way through the end. Soulages would be one of the most generous artists I've ever met. He would invite you in his house that, by the way, he designed in 1959. We were there with Colette. They were married 80 years. They were still holding hands, flirting, talking about art.

They were so generous. They welcome you with delicious food, delicious drinking. Then, there was a time to go back to the studio. In all my visits, he only invited me to the studio twice because the studio was the place where he was alone. No assistant, by himself, mixing pigment, mixing the alchemy of these different materiality and creating his painting.

He was a man who knew every single French president and was visited by every French president. He knew people in the world of music, dance, cinema. He was close friends to Giacometti, had a good solid friendship here in America with Mark Rothko or Robert Motherwell. Spending time with him was traveling through history.

Imagine a man that at the age of 100 has an absolute sharp full-detailed memory. There was no way. I took notes because I couldn't always remember. He talked to me about sitting with Giacometti and seeing dawn rising in Paris and saying, "Oh, again, we spent the whole night talking," and all this incredible history and stories and anecdote. He never forgot anything.

Alison Stewart: Pierre Soulages, From Midnight to Twilight at the Lévy Gorvy Dayan Gallery on view through November 4th. My guest has been Dominique Lévy. Dominique, thank you so much for sharing this with us.

Dominique Lévy: Thank you, Alison. It's been a pleasure.

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