Colour and the Word
Armando Torno
Images are sometimes elusive in the Bible. In Qohelet, for example, the sage that writes and speaks like
a philosopher who has come from Athens to listen to a rabbi from Jerusalem: he pretends to be Salomon but he is faceless, his life knows and mocks time, he refuses form and forms like a first herald of nothing.
He whispers some truths and disappears, between one contradiction and another, after having known like few others the pleasures of life, perhaps in Babylon. He does not show himself even when he screams, preaching in a barbed way, that God exists. And even his name, rather than revealing itself, becomes mysterious as it evolves. The scholars at Alexandria in Egypt, translating revelation in Greek, called him Ecclesiasts, he who speaks to an assembly. But it was an accord, a convention, almost certainly a compromise: Qohelet does not love gatherings; he is a stray dog, a loner. Who knows why he wrote. Who knows who he was?
Colours more than images remain of him, more the resounding beats of his sentences than a doctrine. It could be said at times, when he is intent on evoking vanity, that he needs vapours, the white that conceals everything. In other parts, recalling the bitterness that emotions leave in us, he pushes the sounds of his words towards an intense dark blue that spreads through the Oriental night skies. It is an indescribable blue, which in Qohelet hides the stars also. And what can be said of the woman of the Canticle? Why does she too not have a face? She confesses only a colour, black; all she has, as a viaticum in which to run through biblical pages, is infinite passion. And is she only one, or are there three, intent to follow a man who does not show himself and
responds only to mating calls? The Song of Songs is light blue, all of it, indistinctly. It is that colour more than the sky; it is the intercourse of intercourses that is coloured and erases the lines captured by eyes.
Susanna on the other hand, no, she is different, she has a face; she is beautiful. And with her charm she
a philosopher who has come from Athens to listen to a rabbi from Jerusalem: he pretends to be Salomon but he is faceless, his life knows and mocks time, he refuses form and forms like a first herald of nothing.
He whispers some truths and disappears, between one contradiction and another, after having known like few others the pleasures of life, perhaps in Babylon. He does not show himself even when he screams, preaching in a barbed way, that God exists. And even his name, rather than revealing itself, becomes mysterious as it evolves. The scholars at Alexandria in Egypt, translating revelation in Greek, called him Ecclesiasts, he who speaks to an assembly. But it was an accord, a convention, almost certainly a compromise: Qohelet does not love gatherings; he is a stray dog, a loner. Who knows why he wrote. Who knows who he was?
Colours more than images remain of him, more the resounding beats of his sentences than a doctrine. It could be said at times, when he is intent on evoking vanity, that he needs vapours, the white that conceals everything. In other parts, recalling the bitterness that emotions leave in us, he pushes the sounds of his words towards an intense dark blue that spreads through the Oriental night skies. It is an indescribable blue, which in Qohelet hides the stars also. And what can be said of the woman of the Canticle? Why does she too not have a face? She confesses only a colour, black; all she has, as a viaticum in which to run through biblical pages, is infinite passion. And is she only one, or are there three, intent to follow a man who does not show himself and
responds only to mating calls? The Song of Songs is light blue, all of it, indistinctly. It is that colour more than the sky; it is the intercourse of intercourses that is coloured and erases the lines captured by eyes.
Susanna on the other hand, no, she is different, she has a face; she is beautiful. And with her charm she
lends an identity even to those old men who desire her. She tolerates strong colours, but it is better to spect her with the colours of the innocent water running over her body. Samson, on the other hand, shows his muscles and hair; he emerges from the biblical story with force: he needs pastel tones to live again, almost like Eve’s apple or Moses holding tightly the tablets of the law. And Jesus? What were his colours?
At Cana he decided to shock and from transparency moved to the intense red of wine, the same which in
At Cana he decided to shock and from transparency moved to the intense red of wine, the same which in
the Last Supper miraculously became his blood. Every time Jesus carries out a wonder he subverts colours,
norms, forms. He asked water of the Samaritan to give her life once again and with the adulteress narrated
norms, forms. He asked water of the Samaritan to give her life once again and with the adulteress narrated
by John he violated the laws of mechanics by forcing the stones, which were about to pound the sinner’s
body, to return to earth. And when he resurrects?
Will he still need the red that accompanied him on his earthly peregrinations and on Golgotha?
These and other questions sprang from discussions with Velasco Vitali, when together — more than five years ago — we attempted to recapture moments and figures from the Bible. The colours he chose and the basic features of his figures even at that time seemed to me more suited than my words to greet the new arrival of the Queen of Sheba or to capture in its foolishness the rich man of the Gospels. I now realise that, seeing them together, his works spring from an exegesis that is deeper and more truthful than that of simple prose. If he so desires a painter is able to evoke sounds and smells, in addition to the torment and drama in which the human encounters the divine; on the other hand, those who live from prose can only squabble with terms, trying to choose adjectives that are not inflated or nouns not twisted by advertising. Vitali — and it is a credit to him — directly embraces the biblical scene, enabling us to imagine it, perhaps even dream it. Sometimes he only needs a colour (as with Susanna); at other times he makes a feature crucial — look at her hands — to indicate God’s touch and presence, which is often shadow. Of course he also knows how to play with smudges but, deep down, what is man if not a well-executed smudge of creation?
body, to return to earth. And when he resurrects?
Will he still need the red that accompanied him on his earthly peregrinations and on Golgotha?
These and other questions sprang from discussions with Velasco Vitali, when together — more than five years ago — we attempted to recapture moments and figures from the Bible. The colours he chose and the basic features of his figures even at that time seemed to me more suited than my words to greet the new arrival of the Queen of Sheba or to capture in its foolishness the rich man of the Gospels. I now realise that, seeing them together, his works spring from an exegesis that is deeper and more truthful than that of simple prose. If he so desires a painter is able to evoke sounds and smells, in addition to the torment and drama in which the human encounters the divine; on the other hand, those who live from prose can only squabble with terms, trying to choose adjectives that are not inflated or nouns not twisted by advertising. Vitali — and it is a credit to him — directly embraces the biblical scene, enabling us to imagine it, perhaps even dream it. Sometimes he only needs a colour (as with Susanna); at other times he makes a feature crucial — look at her hands — to indicate God’s touch and presence, which is often shadow. Of course he also knows how to play with smudges but, deep down, what is man if not a well-executed smudge of creation?