I SEND YOU THIS CADMIUM RED... A correspondence between John Berger and John Christieleas reat ose you aan. ‘Ath arort onthe way home| wasting bak our phone ‘convection when we salad abut doing something perhaps shor fm - concerning cour remember sing how we oul beg. "juss acolo” {sfanny now to lookback ove our lees, and see hat ‘they somehow ured themselves ini abook remenbered oo that fest eed —a bt ike abd cord — ferent fom my usual leters in that it esrb a journey Now, ofcourse, can see clearly hat asthe beponng Fone Fram Jota rer Yes i's strange now tose big book ~ Thanks tothe enersy sf aia and Ramon, Not what we though of But rout bothtoBerclona ink than anoter fe, I might be born Barcelona, speaking ‘ataln. An ou? Riga? Somewhere inthe north of Canada? ont how why fm pushing ou noth, an im probly wrong ‘Where? Dr forget youl need a basement fo our ress Tete know Perhaps we cold makes ind fata forthe next Me with some flé-ousJUST SEND ME A COLOUR... 150n4ya1 20s cadmium Reds bok of eters betweee Joh Berger an Joa Cristi They began this orespondence In February ‘What cold ovr ner prlct bet” “ust colour. ‘And painted sua of Camis Red rose he Channel Berger ansnredby ing red ator a Wstry a rigial ais own experience of the Innacnt raf ehdcod, th black it wl bce with ae the we ad onc een, ht dew i aout, Carano red Spuredan ty the varus ayer Jahn Berger licovered in is Cadmium Red, Joh Cvistie ‘sent him one of hs itl hand-made books. The book's cove was painted partiular Brow lou, Smt rustproof pit and Joseph Bays came it play. Some wees ltr Berger ae Christe wee exchanging tes on te Bue of Mats and tbe blu f Vier Kl. An hen rom bls fo th irom Kn to Le Corbi rate dark ssf cave pangs to charce patches of unin, from ee green of kagows to the iter notes of the Bes, fram W.M Graham's Jager sent Court, from yllam to ol, rom Inturnn avr sul way, vocabulary with which the authors cul fet thei exper fences an the rele gradual arse a the slurs hemes. The pletion a Jahn Berger's navel King uncovered a bread gamut of his of red; and the birt of Alc, John ‘hati’ youngest el, ook on he secret colours of meter pet [ASHADOW OF GRASS Fora couse of years Iwas an occasional witness to ths cove Sondence. Tru to his usual made of artistic expression, John Cristie often answered Bere’ tars by mating him 2smal bok. Now ad the be would make an extra cop and sent it tome ‘Stay ears on this comespndence ato colour alo besan oro up In my own ceespon- dene wit an Bers, Unwitngy then Berger and Christe ware when ny curs, confrontng me again and _galnwith hat huran ese for knowlege uth i dep rote in th story a hearts that knnlege atertve fo he details hat alow vst dating and aly realty. Tee Insights ew mento an aparently gratuitous bt rire eset way of nein. Yet it wast i August 2996 ta the near complete clletion~ nobody had thought of bringing it oa close ofthis corresponéence about esour reached me. rea it slowly, but [Asa reader, | et the seduction hidden In every clour dcuse, every dain, a eery hans-made book that lst er ined its stats a am et pening on ow It wae sen: "vensed each sugested smell sealing war, carcboar, Inia nk, satire {even testo map he sound ofthe soft dawn wing blowing trough that shal John Christ deseribeg wth the rite iy Hoes along its ee ‘The sowseay reac ofthe eter, without the saps in tne hat urtate every correspon sees as bregig sre ofthese eds that form We warp of hgh igh estons that fr rom loking carey area ellowed cowl by a needle bring what ene knows inte the resent: memories of what oe Ras rsd and of what one hae ved, which, Blended together make sense once apn sematlon tat donot Ge wit leg and ition tat nl fin ter ue hap inte pases fhe ports rin he arvases en's own vu arene Inthese pape the world oak onthe sothness ef show nich cleus registered bath‘heir continuance and tele Netingness Each color they mentioned contained he ules ertscterberetion in thir wm experienc, he the unrpentable performance of he sun itera pursuit ofthe hd he ean ofthe eters ook rm to ober reaigs. Thy led me to read aga, tse esi tose again anasto reonlse wha ire fr te pat to e revealed one more ‘Zeitoe an annnpeted preston of wats brown and what 0 be known. ‘haste eters Became a trum spur to thinking celta an ooking careful. began 0 vcr other te two ites ways of Tig tele was of being ia the word And con arvana the olour reached me a organi ements that cotanes part of ameaing that sears hare, ane ar of enigma whee rower oul be Sought nthe det of en's sen nernory Te sory ofa certain experince of clour was gig shape and even nes fo des sates and elngs tat, nw named, tered mare accesible vine tad seaing, {wanted to bring ths adventure in perception other readers. {artad to reel this chromatic sales far remove rom the rigours ofthe cles Seatac to the mlecua behaviour ofthe ancients So exqusely contemporary THIS INNOCENT RED OF CHILDHOOD In avturn 1996, 1 propesed to hese two Trends who were writing eachother for the simple pleasure of tat they publish thelr corespondence 2 3 Hook. Tous ascnte by ther slat intoratig the story ofthe ats ino tel ust way of tect and ing eal adr thir capacity bth to fs ard generate suprise felt ‘Sepeasreo thei constam questioning fl the strength that the private ature oftheir rekane aed to what was mere hints ato what was only magia sveested Their sreeiy oovaht me clover and closet he oly objectivity can understand Inthe ars sey repeatedly contemplated thelr handwriting John Chit’ poited hand and ‘Jn Benne’ rounded an; te materials that tikened the page of Ct’ Rand-mae wot eergers wring, pertcty framed an a previously chosen sheet of paper he cle Sul ay the mele tat came and went time an again adres de, festa odes and cours rss ot. Fore tn cerepondence had the prinodial quality of everything hat san end nis eeetats notre of the eters would na dat lave some blank spaces But the reader aula pot hoo spaces to nergected ves, Pemaps ines ve, rented by what sever ‘Coc salé between two people who know each abe the newcomer ay se ow the FY STine ars coud become tncarated ina particular history of vision, And ths what wa hectnety emete would become subctiey lst ‘alanory 199 the bok beson ont Stanpey, today, the etn procs already come Trae though were te natsbook ofa dance performance, ang Valery comes to min a enleas nt is very simple servation, that however afeest the dance may be ‘ram waltng and titarian movements, i uses the sre orga the same bones the same muscles on diferent co-created and arse.” Tutplense ote at, however impesng a theatre may be, the dancers move nthe mist of the mon able pac when they ae on stapes asthe eration ofthe specter Bor ‘decpuion,s absolutely private, Ass the loneliness of awrer eachig for nother set Shout pape: Bu tere no sow witout a heat, nr can oe become an sear WA ‘et ein apart fen alec, nor are here wits witout readers Sort teup ote reader now ta turn the page and to start a personal Joureytroghout 3 Coresgondere hep ntl naw eprvate eng. CUALIAOSEHDear John I hope this doesn’t appear to be too formal a beginning. I wanted to make you a page to turn, something to read as well as look at. the first. colour I thought to send to you was ultramarine, straight forward and strong, ‘a piece of the Void", ‘but as Yves Klein has so completely commandeered that particular blue it seemed more sensible to hold back ‘and perhaps approach it later. Yesterday 1 went to a funeral, someone I didn’t really know very well, and during the service before the Grenation I was looking at the flowers, sone in vases ‘and sone in jars arranged on the steps before the Jectern where the Rabbi stood. My eyes were caught by a bunch of carnations directly in front of ne. Red and yellow carnations in a single vase, not fornaily ‘arranged, just put there, a block of red and a block Of yellow. The red were the nearest and T looked at them for part of the service trying to see how the hheads were constructed, how the petals fitted over one another. But the shapes were too delicate and 1 was Just slichtly too far from then to see properly. ‘As I thought 1 was understanding their shapes so the Brecision of the inage slipped away lixe in a drean when you really need to look at a letter or newspaper. you try hard to read it but always, in the end, the actual text blurs and escapes So for no better reason than the mesory of those flowers I send you this Cadmium Red. I wonder if these strong memory sensations are what | Paul Valéry meant by “the stains of the pure instant’. Zn a small book a friend lent ne called *Graent” by Icelandic artist sirgir Andresson, a book of coloured | Squares, there's an essay at the back entitled Light- | Matter-Bye-Mind by G.J.Arnason. =+.*does that mean that colour is in the mind? Some Philosophers have thought as much, but the idea is either coherent nor does it correspond to common Sense. Grass doesn't just appear to be green; we ‘cannot separate the greenness of the grass from the Qrass itself, by saying that the grass is in the world ut our perceptions of its colour are in the mind’. Tt made me smile when 1 read a renark by Frank Stella “thinking about colour abstractly hasn‘t done me any real good". | bet few arct Fe hearing fom et lwe Tae i[Sx mh 97 Dear John Here's a brown that I love. Matte and opaque, a colour that obliterates and conceals. Although this particular water-based one is used for photo/graphic separations it’s very similar to rust treatment paint. Always a very satisfying job to do, wire brush the Jose flakes and then apply this beautiful colour that hides and heals the rust. But I could never bring myself to carry on and finish the job, cover up the brown. It looked as though the process, the Tenovation, was still in hand, work in progress, when in fact the process had begun and ended with the first coat, the primer Painting the red rust with this red/brown paint, a bit like homeopathy, treating like with like. Joseph Beuys loved a colour similar to this and used it on many of his drawings. I’m sure that his *Braunkreuz" was a standard industrial paint, Something perhaps you could buy at a hardware shop for treating rustThere is a photo of Beuys sitting, talking on the telephone, in one of his work spaces. The tall, well lit room contains a table, two chairs, a smaller table and a settee. Every surface is covered with papers There is a coffee pot and a plate of croissants on the table. He is facing away from the camera towards the window and wearing his trademark hat and waistcoat On the window ledge near a small red fan is what lool like a toy rabbit or hare. The remarkable thing about the room is that the floor, which is relatively uncluttered, is made of leather. Sheets of red/b: leather stitched together and polished by years of walking “intuition is the higher form of reason”1c inn Shave [5i- os G motonas z ustéa vm ms Arawigs : ja wa fat Lean laine A- ailing these pages Mehta, c thong has Aappene Thess howe tinned from pages WT abe, Mh nit gust the way thet they Wve bez rigid or eomteeh bot Phy hone bene /ike Sol fowl « Fie face ng | fornet Hass qucte no wh Senys wn I9SY: “1 Was bevheng from coh (Brown kren whch wns net ot WN expeverned a5 aA Cle, winch ane WS UbStn ve, Lens Say a kine A sculptival XPTESELN whith was a ole 6, Wns nF a cota. Natrrnlly itis also 4 mekagher. ~ < Basen hk frown Te heong from yoy | Lee Jin,1. Light or Dark 2.Pure or Dull Yellow The Three Attributes of Colour Why not a transparent container? Because light ~ natural or artfici ‘as well as many other products. Light eats colours, causes oxidation. corrosion and burning. = spoils milk. Brilliance is a word that has always had a highly specialised meaning. twas derived from the French word briller which means to sparkle cor shine or blaze. Briller was itself taken inthe fifteenth century into French from Latin of the Middle Ages from the word beryllus which meant the beryl. or generally. a precious stone or crystal. the emerald ‘and aquamarine are varieties of beryl. In the nice use of language. brilliance and brightness have always been discriminated: brightness referring merely to natural lights orto light alone in quantity. some thing that is unusual or ar which affects the emotions as well as the senses. A victory. a speech. a personality. @ genius, a musical composition or performance. a scientific experiment or discovery ‘may all be brilliant. The word is in very widespread use and is more- ‘over constantly applied to colours in exactly this same sense. ‘A special remark should be made with regard to Red. There isa very ‘common practice of issuing paints specially for structural purposes. barns, floors, etc. called Red, and some of them even Bright Red and Rich Red which are anything but Red. While a very few have some ‘quality of redness, the majority are quite distinctly Browns. The best that can be said of them is that they may be Reddish Browns: they ‘might just as wel be called Green. Such paints are purchased for their protecting powers and secondarily for their colour: not, by any means for their name. They are not in most cases Red and they should not be called Red. They should be called what they are: Brown. or if desired, Reddish Brown, ‘The name Lemon Yellow would seem sufficiently accurate as a descrip- tive term, yet the colour of lemons varies slightly and the memory for ‘exact colour sensations. when the original is not at hand. is often faulty ‘The sheen of blue silk, the depth of blue velvet, and the gloss of blue ‘enamel are each characteristic ofthe respective material, yet they reall the same colour. Outdoors the general colour effect is subdued, especially in cities where the streets contain much shadow ‘and dark grey. so that by virtue of the unfatigued condition of the eye ‘and of the contrast of the surrounding greyness, the small portions of bright colour in hat. dress and window display always appear of enhanced brilliancy. (colour is troubled light)~ Dear John ‘Atfirst | thought I'd send you a version of the patch of sunlight that | painted on our living room wall on the 1st of August but "at the beginning of December the winter sun shone sharp and ‘clear and | made this painting for you directly onto the paper, ‘trace of the light at 10.30 that moming. “The yellow is the same yellow | used on the wall and, of course, ‘more the colour of sunfiowers than actual sunlight but | was drawn to it as a representation of sunlight or shining light through ‘an extract from a letter by Emile Bernard to G.-Albert Aurier ‘written in 1890 describing Van Gogh's funeral: “On the walls of the room where his body reposed all his last canvases were nailed making a kind of halo around him.... ‘On the coffin, a simple white drapery and masses of flowers, the sunflowers that he so loved, yellow dahliers, yellow flowers ‘everywhere. It was his favourite colour, if you remember, symbol ‘of the light he dreamed of finding in hearts as in artworks" It's a beautiful letter and to check the text that Id copied into ‘my notebook some time ago | looked up the original. | found that Emile Bernard's letter was written on the 1st August, two days after Vincent died and coincidentally, the same date, 107 years later, that | painted that patch of yellow sunlight. EOC, ih.John Berger 20.1. 1998 ‘The thing about green — and maybe this is why itis notoriously difficult to use a lot of iin painting ~is that it's a temporary colour, rot in the technical sense that itis fugitive, but in the metaphysical sense that it's a visitor. I's liquid, undulating, mobile, pushy. (OK. There's ever-green which suggests the opposite, but ever-green is mixed with black so that it becomes almost a mineral colour Like dioptase. The three primary colours are permanent; they are naturally ever-yellow, ever-red, ever-blue. But not green. Maybe the only other colour which appears and disappears in a ‘comparable way, isa certain kind of pink. (The pink you get with cadmium and white— the pink of the sole of a baby's foot without sunlight ~ look at Alice's and kiss it) “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower... drives my green age...” [first read those words of Dylan Thomas in a very small square ‘book (and is ita trick of memory, or was it really green? It seems to me it was) published during the war. It was small soit could be carried in a pocket, ata time when everybody had to travel light. The force of which he speaks, pulses, like an alternating current. ‘The empty gap can last a minimal fraction of a second or six months, But there's a gap, a flicker, and that’s in the nature of green. Itis not permanent. There are emeralds and malachite crystals which are as green as plants. Yet you expect them to change colour whilst your back Is. turned! In places the Aegean sea is emerald-coloured, and we gasp because it stays emerald for days on end. The blue sky above that sea we accept as normal — just as we accept as enduring. the red of aruby or terracotta, Obviously what I'm saying can be dismissed as subjective. ‘But perhaps the mystery is more complicated. Green is the colour ‘of chlorophyll, hence the natural greeness of plants. (The solar ‘energy they absorb is mostly at the red end of the spectrum) ‘Through the process of photosynthesis, plants transform solar ‘energy into chemical energy, thus establishing the basis for all, ‘animal and human life. Green is the colour of the quick —in the contrast between the quick and the dead. The colour of the visitor (Also Veronese, who knew so well how to place it against ‘skin so that the skin became miracle!) Today, here, i's the colour of the grass uncer the snow which covers everything,John Christie 57 Bridgman Road Chiswick London W4 5BB 14.04.1998 Dear John Another book for you. That was quite a difficult question and perhaps my reply hasn't properly answered it, mother-of-pearl being whatever colour you'd like it to be but it was what I saw and the difficulty came in turning it into an answer. The shell interior photographs are just about life size. I can’t remember how we came to have that shell but it has been ‘around the house for several years without any real attention being paid to it and now it has been studied, photographed, researched and thought about continuously for the past few weeks. Rembrandt as well as Boucher had a Jarge collection of shells. While I’m away in Spain I hope to get to see Eulalia in Barcelona, it looks ‘at the moment that I'll go there at the end of the shoot as part of my Journey hone, and 1’11 show her the complete colour project we made so far. Tim sure that between us we can make an interesting show of it. It will be ‘good also to see the Barcelé exhibition. Hopefully I'll have a bit of time Off in Madrid and get to see one or all of your friends there. Tenclose a copy of your original letter. which I love, with the St.Ives Photo and also a recent picture of Alice who is now eight months old and quite a character. hope you like the book and look forward tc speaking with you when I get Tack from Spain on the &th May Love Tin.ohn Berger 23.11.1998 Thank you for the gol. keep itn the cellar. The price Yesterday was 52600 francs per kilo. We'll wait alte. ‘The Japan gold size slike honey, ist it? Is honey the living the colour of immortality {can say the same thing in another way. When you lookat applied al (asin your little book) — you are struck by te fact er the colour is never regular; i's varied. As you say it stores and ‘eflets light, but i receives and gives off waves which are pot Constant ~ as though its surface was liquid rather than sod There's no other colour, is there? lke ths. Pehaps certain whites Tis Could be subjective just me. Forme red and gold). But that Sold has & mysteriously corporeal nature isnot I think subjectee, [’ssimbolism of eternal fe, whichis not only Egyptian bur see 'slamic and Byzantine, depends upon it combining the corporeal And Gs we sad in our previous letters) the unchanging 4 7eassurance about the beyond and an afimation a very calm animation ofthe now. Why does everyone want to touch sold? Tillet you know what the exchange is tomorrow.4GFrom John Berger 2. PS I picked an azalea and brought it home, Now when I contemplate it Init crimson dye I see the colour ‘of my lover's robe. t2umu shkit, roth century Thank you for the honey. Here Sandra has just opened the hives after the winter. One of them had died because there were too few bees — a faulty queen — and they couldn't create, huddled together, enough warmth to survive. Kandinsky asks what shape is yellow and you make ita circle like the sun. I think that, ofthe three primary colours, yellow is the only one which is @ stain. That's to say it takes on the substance of what itis colouring, yet has none of its own. (Gold and the chres are different.) And if yellow is a stain, it has no geometric form of its own, The yellowest thing I can think of is saffron, which is both a stain and a taste. I Jove painting with it on paper ~ although it fades, very quickly ~ painting flowers with saffron isa kind of short- Circuit of collaboration, no? It seems to me the majority of flowers are yellow ~ then white, then blue and purple; reds are rare ‘Yet and this is part of the thrill — the saffron yellow comes ut ofa red. The little red fibres when moistened stain yellow! And the shock, the litle shock of that transformation has something to do withthe taste of saffron, whe mb wilt Tm p ports p shay be caren Ih magesity Kia Mure ie i Sal shade 1 wilt We?‘TWO PATCHES OF SUNLIGHT8,30 1st August 198 The beholding of the light is itself a more excellent and a fairer thing than all the uses of it04.12.97 pondered, after your call, on using the words about Chauvet from my iter but decided in the end to leave it as a letter - too long in the dark. here's the escape from the darkness, something new, a book full of ht ("a ball of light in one’s hand”) with that strange coincidence dates which took me by surprise when the thing was all but finished. felt as though something else was going on that I couldn’t quite put finger on because I'd written the quote in my work book two or three wars ago and had no idea of the date the original was written. (It was bit like the feeling we all got when the candle suddenly blew out you were reading the MS you'd written after Marcel’s death, “A h of Flowers in a Glass”). book, in the end, fell into place after finding my way out of the Ss, I hope you like it. x the first patch of sunlight you can see Len McComb’s portrait of fieve which is hanging at the end of the room now. I had lunch him last Sunday at the RA where he is head of the painting school, his own flat and studio in the Academy, and he showed me a new ip of work, all figure studies. They were very impressive, he works hard both at his teaching and his own painting - he’s a great character. Purdy Hicks gallery is a good space, I’m sure the motorcycle drawings show well there, and the book too. I look forward to seeing you the drawings in January. Yt remember if I told you bit I sold a copy of “Pages of the i) to The Art Gallery of New South Wales for their collection when in sydney and another went off last week to a US dealer, destined for the New York Public Library. fll you next weekend “ne Taw.