you “hear” the color and you “see” the sound
“Some scientists (especially physicists) [and] some artists (especially musicians) . . . noticed long ago that a musical sound, for example, provokes an association of a precise color. . . . Stated otherwise, you “hear” the color and you “see” the sound. . . .
YELLOW . . . possesses the special capacity to “ascend” higher and higher and to attain heights unbearable to the eye and the spirit; the sound of trumpet played higher and higher becoming more and more “pointed,” giving pain to the ear and to the spirit. BLUE, with the completely opposite power to “descend” into infinite depths, develops the sounds of the flute (when it is light blue), of the cello (when it has descended farther), of the double bass with its magnificent deep sounds; and in the depths of the organ you “see” the depths of blue. GREEN is well balanced and corresponds to the medium and the attenuated sounds of the violin. When skillfully applied, RED (vermillion) can give the impression of strong drum beats, etc.”
—Wassily Kandinsky, from Concrete Art, 1938.
intensely iridescent
“How is it possible still to see the human face pink, now that our life, redoubled by noctambulism, has multiplied our perceptions as colorists’ The human face is yellow, red, green, blue, violet. The pallor of a woman gazing in a jeweller’s window is more intensely iridescent that the prismatic fires of the jewels that fascinate her like a lark.”
—F.T. Marinetti, from his Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto, 1910.
The Deep Blue Of The Firmament
“I should lie out in the garden in a hammock, and read sentimental novels with a melancholy ending, until the book would fall from my listless hand, and I should recline there, dreamily gazing into the deep blue of the firmament, watching the fleecy clouds, floating like white-sailed ships, across its depths, and listening to the joyous song of the birds, and the low rustling of the trees.”
—Jerome K. Jerome, On Being Idle, 1889.
that white heaven
“Nowhere did I find a really clear space for sketching until this occasion when I prolonged beyond the proper limit the process of lying on my back in bed. Then the light of that white heaven broke upon my vision, that breadth of mere white which is indeed almost the definition of Paradise, since it means purity and also means freedom. But alas! like all heavens, now that it is seen it is found to be unattainable: it looks more austere and more distant than the blue sky outside the window. For my proposal to paint on it with the bristly end of a broom has been discouraged—never mind by whom . . . —and even my proposal to put the other end of the broom into the kitchen fire and turn it into a charcoal has not been conceded.”
—G.K. Chesterton, On Lying in Bed, 1926.
Yankee Doodly Dum
“Once in khaki suits
Gee, we looked swell
Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum.
Half a million boots went sloggin’ thru Hell,
I was the kid with the drum.”
—Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?, music by Jay Gorney, words by E.Y. Harburg, 1932; quoted by Norman Mailer in The Naked and the Dead, 1948.
a sensual isle
“The sunset was magnificent with the intensity and brilliance that can be found only in the tropics. . . .
It was a sensual isle, a Biblical land of ruby wines and golden sands and indigo trees. The men stared and stared. The island hovered before them like an Oriental monarch’s conception of heaven, and they responded to it with an acute and terrible longing. It was a vision of all the beauty for which they had ever yearned, all the ecstasy they had ever sought. . . .
It could not last. Slowly, inevitably, the beach began to dissolve in the encompassing night. The golden sands grew faint, became gray-green, and darkened. The island sank into the water, and the tide of night washed over the rose and lavender hills. After a little while, there was only the gray-black ocean, the darkened sky, and the evil churning of the gray-white wake. Bits of phosphorescence swirled in the foam. The black dead ocean looked like a mirror of the the night; it was cold, implicit with dread and death. The men felt it absorb them in a silent pervasive terror. They turned back to their cots, settled down for the night, and shuddered for a long while in their blankets.”
—Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead, 1948.
the interpreters of our dreams
“Advertisers are the interpreters of our dreams—Joseph intepreting for Pharaoh. Like the movies, they infect the routine futility of our days with purposeful adventure. Their weapons are our weaknesses: fear, ambition, illness, pride, selfishness, desire, and ignorance. And these weapons must be kept as bright as a sword.”
—E.B. White, Writings for the New Yorker 1927-1976, 1991, as quoted by Marcel Danesi in Brands, 2006.
the greatest work of all
“We are great fools. ‘He has spent his life in idleness,’ we say, and ‘I have done nothing today.’ What! have you not lived? That is not only the fundamental, but the most noble of your occupations. ‘If I had been put in charge of some great affair, I might have shown what I can do.’ Have you been able to reflect on your life and control it? Then you have performed the greatest work of all.”
—Michel de Montainge, from On Experience, 1580.
opening the soul to what is not the soul
“The eye accomplishes the prodigious work of opening the soul to what is not the soul—the joyous realm of things and their god, the sun.”
—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, from Eye and Mind, translated by Carleton Dallery, 1964.
the new concentrated perception
“As a medium, color is a go-between for the values weak and dispersed in ordinary experiences and the new concentrated perception occasioned by a painting.”
—John Dewey, from Art as Experience, 1934.