Technical information
- Title : Phantom Silhouettes
- Date : 1969
- Technique : Oil on canvas
- Dimensions : Unknown
- Location : Unknown
Biographical / historical context
In 1969, Breuillaud explores a phase of formal permeability in which compositions spread across the surface rather than closing into nuclei. Light becomes more homogeneous—often yellow or milky—and forms, while retaining the organic writing of late MP4, clarify into phantom silhouettes.
The canvas frequently organizes itself around a tension between a nocturnal zone and a luminous zone, as if the appearance of beings depended on a threshold. The work thus presents a scene of emergence: a community of figures takes shape within a pale layer, under the pressure of a dark sky that functions as cosmic depth.
Formal / stylistic description
The composition is dominated by a vast yellow membrane, slightly greenish, occupying most of the surface and serving as a field of apparition. Within this luminous layer are inscribed bodies and heads with ovoid eyes, linked by a network of very fine red and orange lines that both draw contours and suggest internal circulation.
Some figures stretch into bird-like profiles or elongated skulls; others, heavier, slump in the foreground in postures of rest or abandonment. Above, a dense blue-black band, punctuated with green and golden traces, establishes a nocturnal vault; out of this darkness emerge paler faces, suspended at the limit between night and light. The paint, granular and at times impastoed, catches light on the weave of the canvas, while the continuous, fluid red line maintains the unity of a world in which each being seems to slide into the next.
Comparative analysis / related works
Through the duality between a clear membrane and an upper nocturnal zone, the painting extends the imagination of masks and vigils already present in MP4 compositions of 1966–1967, but translates it into a more level, luminous atmosphere. It differs from the closed circular nuclei of 1965–1967: here light does not emanate from a single incandescent center, but spreads across the whole surface, turning figures into apparitions.
This shift corresponds to late-decade research in which beings become more like signals than masses, and in which the relation wake/sleep, appearance/disappearance is inscribed directly into the day/night architecture of the canvas. The work thus anticipates later developments based on horizontality and the diffusion of an inner light rather than matrix-like compression.
Justification of dating and attribution
The 1969 dating and attribution to Breuillaud rest on converging evidence: the dominance of an even yellow light, the filiform red highlights, and the presence of an upper nocturnal zone correspond to research pursued between 1968 and 1970, after the densest MP4 phase.
The work no longer shows the circular masses typical of 1965–1967, but a continuous horizontal membrane—sign of a compositional shift toward the level and the diffuse. A signature at the lower right, together with an annotation “69” visible at the lower left, reinforces the coherence of the dating, while the overall features of line, material handling, and figurative vocabulary confirm the attribution.