“La couleur qui est vibration comme la musique atteint ce qu’il y a de plus général et partant de plus vague dans la nature: sa force intérieure.”(12)
(Colour, which is pure vibration, just like music, reaches what is the most general and therefore the vaguest in nature: its internal force.)
(English translation – excerpt)
GAUGUIN: Musicians, on the contrary, are fortunate. Sounds, harmonies. Nothing else. They live in a special world. Painting also should be special; as a sibling of music, painting lives through shapes and colours. Colour, which is pure vibration, just like music, reaches what is the most general and therefore the vaguest in nature: its internal force. As animated matter able to stimulate imagination, colour opens a new door towards infinity and mystery.
THE INTERIOR VOICE: See to it that everything lives in the superior stillness of the spirit.
GAUGUIN: By means of elaborate harmonies we create symbols. Since colour is enigmatic by nature in the way it awakens feelings, one cannot logically use it otherwise than enigmatically, not for drawing, but for conveying the musical feelings which derive from itself, from its nature, from its internal force, mysterious and enigmatic as it is.
