Synesthesia : the Colours of Words

Is synesthesia an association of colour with sensations, or with deeper mental realities ? I present on another page my exploration of the way elements of image -shapes and objects- become imbued with alien chromatic qualities. Equally interesting is the association of colours with symbols. Maybe the intrication of vowel and colour is the matrix on which all other synesthetic associations develop ?

The classic example of synaesthesia is the colour of letters, syllables and words. My systematic exploration of those ancient and rainbow-coloured anfractuosities of my mind could not neglect that realm. I discovered the interest which that phenomenon elicited in artists and poets when in school we were presented the sonet by Arthur Rimbaud, Voyelles, of which I will here be satisfied with quoting the first two verses :

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes ...

Actually my colours for vowels were not the same as Rimbaud's. I would have started with something like

A noir, E blanc, O rouge, U jaune, I bleu: voyelles, ...

Synesthesia in itself is moderately interesting. It becomes interesting when its relations to figuration and abstraction are explored. This scheme becomes the central figure of a composition contrasting it with a background conceived as a landscape converted into camouflage.

The Colours of Vowels.
Acrylic on linen. 70x70cm. may'2001.

The background here is contrasted with the figure (the central square) in that the proportion of naturalism and convention in the representation are inverted :

	Drawing	Colour
Central motif	Mimetic	Arbitrary
Background	Arbitrary	Mimetic

Theories propagated by some romantic or modernist writers and artists (notably Kandinsky) glorify synestesia as a kind of universal language and key to a world of transcendental ideas. I prefer to think that it is just a personal experience rooted in chilhood association not cleared by adult reason. Synesthesia only interest me, as an artist, insofar as it provides chromatic determination unfettered by conventional representation or aesthetic bias. It plays a role similar to what chance was for some artists (like Ellsworth Kelly) wanting to escape conscious control.

Vowels come to life in langage as inhabitants of words, where their hues lose their purity through the frequentation of consonants. In words, each of the consonants has a peculiar way, grayish or brownish, to muddy its neighboring vowels. It is remarkable that in syllables and words, the synesthetic colour is that of letters, not sounds. The french word voix, which sounds like [vwa] has a purplish colour resulting from a combination of the red of o and the blue of i -not the black of a. Proper names manifest best the mimologic illusions of language whereby the word appears to entertain a natural bond to a thing it points to. I wholeheartedly agree here with Gérard Genette in his analysis of Plato's Cratyle. A series of small paintings gave me an acute pleasure in the paradoxical figuration made possible by synesthesia: it is a figuration indeed punctiliously attentive to the exact figuration of a mental reality, while devoid of the conventional symbolic associations which form the substance of representation.

Boris Karloff	Mao-Tse-Toung	Mao_Ze_Dong
Miles Davis	Winston Churchill	Vincent Van Gogh
Jacques Lacan	Hokusai	Paolo Ucello
Henri Pousseur	Bertrand Russell	Arthur Rimbaud
Umberto Boccioni	Ellsworth Kelly	Alice et Florent
Nicolas Poussin	Toutankhamon	Robin des Bois
Mickey Mouse	Morris Louis	Guido Reni

These are acrylics on linen 40x40cm. I called them "Self-Portrait as ..."  for the simple reason that they tell a lot more about myself than about the wearers of the names. They were made in 2001 and first exhibited in december 2001. Others followed, mostly as studies in the context of other works.

	Marcel Duchamp	Jacques Villon
Thierry Gonze (Beau)	Thierry Gonze (Vrai)	Rouge-Vert-Bleu

It is this principle of composition based on the colours of words which shall be exploited for ulterior developments, for instance Travels and Encounters, where two words are combined through superimposition.

Another kind of symbol which for me are coloured is ciphers. A layout of the first five non-natural integers produces the following result, on a slate-coloured ground.

For the painting, like for vowels, this scheme act as a figure inserted in a sort of landscape.

The Colours of Ciphers (One).
Acrylic on linen.70x70cm. may'2001.

The Colours of Ciphers (Zero).
Acrylic on linen. 70x70cm. may'2001.