Unlike the Red Bishop, I have never loved you.

 

Nevertheless, your physical nature was also born from the unveiled protection of geometrically structured space to come to live, just like him, in the sublime beauty of absolute emptiness.

 

But you are more than your physical being and you have usurped blue, the most spiritual of all colours: and you don’t deserve it.

 

You will certainly remember that the essence of what you could be has been sought out tirelessly in endless and successive drawings representing many and varied humours. But as you well know, it was in the contemplation of the theatrical beauty of religious symbols that both germinated. Yes, I know that you will tell me, in the manner of Aristotle, showing off your philosophical pretensions, ‘that there is nothing in the intellect that has not first been in the senses’.

 

And maybe for that reason, you will admit that you were never wanted as a mere passive impression of a reality or as a simple fruit of a perception. On the contrary, you were the formulation of something more than a concept: a judgement.

 

And it is for this reason that, as you gradually emerged from the labyrinth of that geometry and finally revealed yourself to me like that, ironically adorned with a monocle and wearing leather gloves, holding the crosier as if it were a whip before a dry and selfishly indivisible piece of bread, I found in you – or surprisingly through you – the icon of my pre-concepts and pre-judice.

 

It was then, very firmly, that my dislike for you was confirmed.

 

 

Jorge Pinheiro

S. Pedro do Estoril, 14/07/2012