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Saint Foy abbey-church |
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Pierre Soulages' stained-glass windows |
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In 1987,Pierre Soulages, a french abstract painter of international knowledge born in 1919 in Rodez, whose childhood memories have been impreganted by this places, began to work enthusiastically over a plan for creating stained-glass windows for Saint Foy of Conques. In 1994, he completed the achievement of 95 windows and 9 loopholes which respect and magnify teh roman austerity and its symbols and beckon light to enter the church.
From an opalescent material, the artist has found an uncommon and authentic plastic sign which both holds the sensory world as an emotion and the spiritual one as a final revelation.
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A book over stained-glass windows |
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The evidence is the fruit of a long progression that Georges Duby, Christian Heck, Jean-Dominique Fleury, master glass artist and Pierre Soulages himself, relate all along these pages punctuated by Vincent Cunillere's beautiful photographs. A progression which consists in "starting from the edifice to return to the edifice" according to the common expression but not the common practice. Indeed, Pierre Soulages has a close knowledge of the abbey-church of Conques. It is the place where he experienced one of the first aesthetic emotions : indeed, behind it, when he was a child, he definitely chose to dedicate his life to art. But when he answered to the public order for some stained-glass windows for this abbey-church, Soulages deliberately set back "his affectivity linked with the memories of his childhood" in order to base his investigation on "an objective analysis of the architecture" , which relevance has been advisedly underlined by Georges Duby. |
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If in Conques windows are numerous - we can count 104 for an only 56 m edifice - it is
because the inner space must be
"«flooded with light"
given that it is
"the picture of the celestial city (...) illuminated by God's glory"
according to the medievalist's expression. It is the light coming from the openings and
evolving with the racing of the sun which gives rythm to this space as well as the
passing of hours and seasons, thus turning the basilica in a
«vast machinery to trap time».
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As for the possible coloured pattern of the original stained-glass windows which let us suppose the monks of Conques' taste for the gems' gleam, nothing justifies it now that the edifice's walls are bare, stripped of any fresco of hanging. And according to Georges Duby it is precisely «in its bare lines, plans, stones that this architecture affects us» . Far from any reconstructed Middle Ages, Pierre Soulages' plan was to serve this architecture «such as it has reached us» and to make it be seen. With this end in view, the thing to do was to let come into the edifice the only light able to reveal the fine contrasts of the stones - that is the natural light - while protecting this place of meditation and contemplation from any view from or on the outside. |
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His investigations lead Pierre Soulages to imagine a new glass product of which he
describes us the stages of achievement in his work's note. The created material is
composed of white glass grains distributed in a heterogeneous way. In the glass mass
itself, the natural light undergoes modulations : it reflects even more since the inner
crystallizations of the glass are thick, he writes ; then the light appears outside the
edifice in a natural bluish color whereas inside, in these same areas, warm shades stand
out. Thus these stained-glass windows send out a lively light which possesses an
interiority in harmony with such a place's identity and function.
As noticed by Christian Heck, this feeling of life is intensified by the stained-glass windows' design, the suppleness of their lines which never increase the architecture ones but come with the light's modulation all along the openings. Thus the evidence results from "the material's trueness" and «the very profound agreement between form and function» . We are becoming aware of such a secret evidence by the texts and photographs included in this book which will prompt many readers to find time to admire theirselves, all along days and seasons, the exceptional architecture of the abbey-church of Conques magnified by Soulages' light. |
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Texts from Xavier KAWA-TOPOR
European centre for art and medieval civilization Photographs from Joel FUALDES Translation from Valérie FABRE |
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