Christian Sorg’s painting is quite disconcerting. You can judge this by visiting the exhibition of forty paintings dedicated to him at the Bouvet-Ladubay Contemporary Art Centre in Saumur (Maine-et-Loire). Large formats, powerfully brushed, apparently abstract. Born in 1941, he is from the generation of artists of the Supports/Surfaces movement, who questioned in particular the elements (canvas, frames, etc.) making up a painting. But, while he admits to having been interested in their approach, he is not sensitive to their systemic spirit and follows his own little path.
This took him more than thirty years ago to Calaceite, in Aragon, in the province of Teruel. ” There is, he said, a before and after-Calaceite. » He now spends part of the year in this village considered one of the most beautiful in Spain. The rest of the time, he lives in Burgundy, near Vézelay (Yonne) but especially the caves of Arcy-sur-Cure. These have been known since time immemorial, but it was only quite recently that it was discovered that they had been decorated in the Paleolithic. He has of course made a few pilgrimages there.
Armed with this meager knowledge, the critic says to himself: “Oh my goodness, of course he’s an abstract landscaper!” The term was coined in 1956 by our late colleague Michel Ragon (1924-2020) to characterize the painting of his friend James Guitet (1925-2010), unfortunately somewhat neglected today, but who was a bridge between post-war abstraction and the next generation, the work of Claude Rutault, for example, or that of the Supports/Surfaces movement. Artists as diverse as Joan Mitchell, Olivier Debré, Zao Wou-Ki, and Martin Barré, among others, were quickly grouped under the term “abstract landscape painting” – without asking their opinion.
Geological chaos
For them, it is not a question of restoring nature, but of drawing inspiration from it, not of transposing it, but of evoking the impression it provokes. And, in front of certain paintings by Sorg – often horizontal and elongated formats, stretched on these frames that the French nomenclature of artist supplies rightly designates under the name of ” landscape “ –, it is indeed all the aridity and heat of the Aragonese lands, the geological chaos of the Sierra del Maestrazgo, its cliffs and valleys, that we see. Or that we imagine. In front of others, the soft and green valleys of the first foothills of the north of Morvan. In short, an abstract painter, but with memories. And we are very happy to have been able to stick it in a pretty box with the beautiful label “abstract landscaper”. This is until we come face to face with a bull.
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