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Sobre a Casa da Cor – Entrevista com Philippe Henry

Diogo Andrade BornhausenRodrigo Maltez NovaesRodrigo PetronioPhilippe Henry

In this interview, Philippe Henry talks about himself, his intellectual formation, his intense friendship with Vilém Flusser, Karl Gerstner, Louis Bec and Gottfried Jäger, but above all about the cultural and philosophical significance of colour and the project of the Casa da Cor. The most salient philosophical attribute of colour is what Henry calls the “spectral continuum”, a notion that was also central to Flusser’s and Karl Gerstner’s understanding of colour. Colours project a fluid borderless world. Henry discusses at length the importance of Gerstner’s and Goethe’s colour theory and their criticism of Newton. In early 1987, Henry got to know Flusser through a student of FAAP (Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado). He visited Flusser several times in Robion that with the time became a kind of second headquarter of the Casa da Cor. After the failure of the project in Brazil in late 1989, Flusser and some friends, among them Jean Digne, attempted to transfer it to France. Heny also speaks about the planned journal “Revista da Casa da Cor” for which Flusser had written a few texts. Unfortunately, both projects were not realized. He concludes the interview by referring to Flusser’s attempt to move beyond physics and physiology in order to develop a cultural colour code: “Therefore, behind a new Color Code, there should always be a Cultural Theory of Colors. That was the task of the Casa da Cor. And it still is.”