MÓNICA DE LA TORRE ASSEMBLES EXTRACTS OF WRITING ON COLOUR IN RESPONSE TO DONALD JUDD’S WORKS.
“Words to describe colors are scarce.” Donald Judd makes this assertion in the essay ‘Some Aspects of Color in General and Red and Black in Particular’, in which he discusses his wielding of color and space in the series of painting/object hybrids, commonly known as ‘The Multicolored Works’ that he began in 1984. He goes on to describe colours as acid, clear, sharp, dark, stained, soft, full, dull, and so on, yet the truth of his claim is evinced by the obduracy of the colours he uses in these works. These are colours that stop you in your tracks by the undecodable semiotics of their combinations, neither ‘harmonious’ nor ‘inharmonious in reaction’; by their radical equality and self-sufficiency; by their refusal to evoke anything other than themselves. He goes on to write, “No immediate feeling can be attributed to color… Its existence as it is the main fact and not what it might mean, which may be nothing.” How to articulate the exuberance of the sensations it evokes presented in the works’ various rhythmical arrangements? Words fall short in comparison.
Asked to respond to an exhibition of these works at the Pulitzer Foundation of the Arts in St. Louis in 2013, all I could do was to write through them, allowing myself to receive their instruction. This often is my approach to ekphrasis. Rather than putting words into an artwork’s figurative mouth, I experiment with translating process and the handling of materials into a verbal medium. Judd’s palette came from the RAL colour chart, a system regulating industry standards; originally, he figured out combinations by collaging printed colour samples. That inspired me to collage printed matter for my poems. To each of the colours in Judd’s works, I intuitively associated particular writers, selecting passages of theirs that in one way or another evoked colour’s vibrant effects on the retina. Quotes oscillated in length from 30 to 60 to 90 words, following the measurements of the steel aluminium units screwed together in Judd’s works. The rest I assembled much like he did: combining my blocks of sourced text in accordance with the sequences in ‘The Multicolored Works’. Keys accompany the following examples.
(85-11)
systematize confusion and thereby contribute to discrediting the world of reality. I like the rule that corrects the emotion. what’s most real is the illusions I create. my memory is. as if the sea should part, and show a further sea—and that—a further—and the three but a presumption be—of periods of seas—unvisited of shores—themselves. water makes many beds for those averse to sleep—its awful chamber open stands—its curtains blandly sweep—abhorrent is the rest in undulating rooms whose amplitude no end invades—red and black represent life, a supernatural and excessive life: the eye’s black frame renders the glance penetrating, giving it the decisive appearance of a window open upon the infinite; and the range that sets fire to the cheek-bone goes to increase the brightness of the pupil and adds to a beautiful woman’s face the mysterious passion of a priestess. makeup doesn’t have the need to hide itself or to shrink from being suspected; on the contrary, let it display itself, at least it does so with frankness and honesty.
a shining indication of yellow consists in there having been more of the same color than could have been expected when all four were bought. this necessarily spread into nothing. bananas—I got lusting palate—I always eat them—I feel whoozy! I don’t hanker after billy boys—but I am entitled to be deeply shocked. a dozen cocktails—please—automatonguts, rotating appetite—upbear against insensate systems systematical mechanism’s selferecting—annihilating cutchew immortality’s timeless digestive phallic act’s vacuity! cultivating primeval sense’s instinctive caution: “keep smiling!” act—go on—industry uninvestigated! systematize confusion and thereby contribute to discrediting the world of reality. I like the rule that corrects the emotion. what’s most real is the illusions I create. my memory is a color film, technically superior to commercial films. I prefer black-and-white film: it’s more severe and suits my taste for analysis. it’s also different from this reserve stock of images. an artistic theory will function for the artistic product in the very same way as the artistic product itself functions as advertising for the order under which it is produced.
(side view)
makeup doesn’t have the need to hide itself; it will function as advertising for the order under which it is produced. let it display itself, at least it does so with frankness and honesty. black-and-white film: it’s severe and suits my taste for analysis. let it display this reserve stock of images.
KEY:
30 60 90
traffic black (Broodthaers) / turquoise blue (Dickinson) / black red (Baudelaire)
saffron yellow (Stein) / sulfur yellow (Von Freytag-Loringhoven) / traffic black (Broodthaers)
(85-14)
one day I am thinking of a color: orange. I write a line about orange. pretty soon it is a whole page of words, not lines. then another page. there… systematize confusion and thereby contribute to discrediting the world of reality. I like the rule that corrects the emotion. what’s most real is the illusions I create. my memory is. the tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. as the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. a shining indication of yellow consists in there having been more of the same color than could have been expected when all four were bought. this necessarily spread into nothing.
(side view)
one day I am thinking of a color: orange. I write a line about orange. the tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. look how white everything is, how pretty soon it is a whole page of words, not lines. then another page. there… quiet, how snowed-in. as the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. one day I am thinking of a color: orange. I write a line about orange. the tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. look how white everything is, how.
(opposite side view)
systematize confusion and thereby contribute to discrediting the world of reality. I like the rule a shining indication of yellow consists in there having been more of the same color that corrects the emotion. what’s most real is the illusions I create. my memory is than could have been expected when all four were bought. this necessarily spread into nothing. systematize confusion and thereby contribute to discrediting the world of reality. I like the rule a shining indication of yellow consists in there having been more of the same color.
KEY:
30 30
traffic orange (O’Hara) / traffic black (Broodthaers)
pure white (Plath) / saffron yellow (Stein)
(85-19)
red and black represent life, a supernatural and excessive life: the eye’s black frame renders the glance penetrating, giving it the decisive appearance of a window open upon the infinite; and moan in the flames of your hidden equator for it is just that a man not look for his pleasure in the forest of blood of the following morning. in burr side out sights hearing disks blinking face blindly passing car’ slights of sound stinging lies beside in the glass something never seen again a face among the wheels. water makes many beds for those averse to sleep—its awful chamber open stands—its curtains blandly sweep—abhorrent is the rest in undulating rooms whose amplitude no end invades—
(side view)
red and black represent life, a supernatural and excessive life: the eye’s black frame renders in burr side out sights hearing disks blinking face blindly passing car’ slights of sound the glance penetrating, giving it the decisive appearance of a window open upon the infinite; stinging lies beside in the glass something never seen again a face among the wheels. red and black represent life, a supernatural and excessive life: the eye’s black frame renders in burr side out sights hearing disks blinking face blindly passing car’ slights of sound.
(opposite side view)
and moan in the flames of your hidden equator for it is just that a water makes many beds for those averse to sleep—its awful chamber open stands—its man not look for his pleasure in the forest of blood of the following morning. curtains blandly sweep—abhorrent is the rest in undulating rooms whose amplitude no end invades— moan in the flames of your hidden equator for it is just that a man makes many beds for those averse to sleep—its awful chamber open stands—its curtains.
KEY:
30 30
black red (Baudelaire) / blood orange (Lorca)
black blue (Pritchard) / turquoise blue (Dickinson)
Mónica de la Torre is a poet and essayist whose most recent book is Repetition Nineteen (Nightboat Books, 2020).
nightboat.org
Sources:
Charles Baudelaire, ‘In Praise of Cosmetics’, in Jonathan Mayne (trans. and ed.), The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (New York: Phaidon, 1965).
Marcel Broodthaers, ‘My Memory Is a Film in Color’ and ‘View’ in Gloria Moure (ed.) Marcel Broodthaers: Collected Writings (Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, 2012).
Emily Dickinson, poems 720, ‘As if the Sea should part’ and 898, ‘An Hour is a Sea’ in R.W. Franklin (ed.) The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1999).
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, ‘A dozen cocktails – please’ and ‘Constitution’ in Irene Gammel and Suzanne Zelazo (eds.) Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011).
Federico García Lorca, ‘Ode to Walt Whitman,’ After Lorca (1957) in Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian (eds.) My Vocabulary Did This To Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008).
Marianne Stockebrand (ed.), Donald Judd: The Multicolored Works (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014).
Frank O’Hara, ‘Why I Am Not a Painter’ in Donald Allen (ed.), The Selected Poems of Frank O’Hara (New York: Random House, 1974).
Sylvia Plath, ‘Tulips’, in Ariel (New York: Harper & Row, 1966).
N.H. Pritchard, ‘Subscan’ in The Matrix: Poems 1960–1970 (New York: Doubleday, 1970).
Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons: The Corrected Centennial Edition (San Francisco: City Lights, 2014).