In the third of Samuel Beckett's three dialogues with Georges Duthuit, we are treated to the following exchange: Duthuit  "One moment. Are you suggesting that the painting of van Velde is inexpressive?" Beckett (a fortnight later)  "Yes." D  "You realise the absurdity of what you advance?" B  "I hope I do."

In Beckett's lexicon, "inexpressive" is not derogatory. It signals, in fact, that an artist is getting to the core of what it means to be an artist  as in his often-quoted remarks about "the expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express."

Bram van Velde could have been made for Beckett. He could, come to think of it, have been made by Beckett, not only in the sense that he has the characteristics of the typical Beckettian character, but in that it was as much thanks to Beckett's private and public support as to his own talent that he was able to lift himself out of the ­extreme poverty which he had suffered for much of his life.

There are 30 pages of interviews with Beckett in this book; 120 pages with van Velde. However, one should not feel cheated should one be hoping to hear more from the more famous master: there is plenty about him in the conversations with van Velde. My favourite is his recollection of the time Beckett came to visit him during one of the rare periods when he  van Velde  wasn't too unhappy with his own work. He told Beckett that he was "almost satisfied", and Beckett replied "expressionlessly": "There's really no reason to be."

"Totally thrown by this response, Bram retreated to a corner of the studio, where he sat down at the table and began to eat to cover his confusion. Meanwhile, Beckett stood motionless in the loft, fixing him with his eagle eye." No wonder that, in the next interview, van Velde says: "Beckett? There is nobody more silent. From time to time he used to let slip a few words. But they were not encouraging."

But they were, really. Van Velde calls Beckett an "archangel", and his meeting with him in 1940 so fortuitous that it might well have saved his life (or his art). "When you've known someone like him, so many other people seem like mere robots by comparison."

But van Velde, who appears to have painted fewer pictures in his entire life than Picasso did in the last year of his ("Picasso's curse was never being able to do nothing"), cannot have been an easy interviewee. There are long silences recorded here. Once they see a horse. "Turning to me, he kept repeating over and over again, 'Horse . . . horse . . . horse . . .'  pointing at it with all the eagerness of an excited child."

As for the interviews with Beckett, you can't help endorsing van Velde's assessment of the man. Few writers have exerted such a gravitational pull, have literally drawn so many readers to his presence simply through his own virtues (I was one of many who hesitated on his doorstep before turning away out of fear and respect). Juliet's interviews, conducted between 1968 and 1977 (the interviews with van Velde span 1964 to 1979) convey a very good sense of what it would have been like to be an acolyte aged 30 or so, trembling gauchely at his feet, yet basking in his patience. And often something illuminating pops out. Asked if he rereads the mystics  St John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart etc  Beckett replies: "Yes . . . I like . . . I like their . . . their illogicality . . . their burning illogicality  the flame . . . the flame . . . Which consumes all our filthy logic . . ."

The interesting thing about all these interviews is that they attest, surprisingly, to put it mildly, to their very lack of cerebrality  to the extent which Beckett in particular sees himself as the opposite of an intellectual. It is perhaps sad that only they who wouldn't object to being called intellectuals will read this fascinating book; but it contains enough startling insights about art  their own and others'  to be worth reading whether you consider yourself such or not.