I send you this Cadmium Red … is a book of correspondence between two friends, John Berger and John Christie. It began in February 1997, when in response to an open question from Christie: “What could our next project be?” Berger replied: “Just send a colour…”
A painted square of Cadmium Red crossed the Channel.
For Berger this first colour suggested innocence. “…the red of childhood… the red of young eyelids shut tight”. Later he talked about his favourite red, the red of Caravaggio: “…the red by which you swear to love forever…the red whose father is the knife”.
An exhibition of the correspondence about color between John Berger and John Christie.
Museu d’Art de Girona, 2000
La Casa Revilla municipal art gallery, Valladolid 2001
Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, 2001
If one says ‘Red’ (the name of the color) and there are 50 people listening, it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.
∆ Josef Albers