The World According to Color
A Cultural History
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A kaleidoscopic exploration that traverses history, literature, art, and science to reveal humans' unique and vibrant relationship with color.
We have an extraordinary connection to color—we give it meanings, associations, and properties that last millennia and span cultures, continents, and languages. In The World According to Color, James Fox takes seven elemental colors—black, red, yellow, blue, white, purple, and green—and uncovers behind each a root idea, based on visual resemblances and common symbolism throughout history.
Through a series of stories and vignettes, the book then traces these meanings to show how they morphed and multiplied and, ultimately, how they reveal a great deal about the societies that produced them: reflecting and shaping their hopes, fears, prejudices, and preoccupations.
Fox also examines the science of how our eyes and brains interpret light and color, and shows how this is inherently linked with the meanings we give to hue. And using his background as an art historian, he explores many of the milestones in the history of art—from Bronze Age gold-work to Turner, Titian to Yves Klein—in a fresh way. Fox also weaves in literature, philosophy, cinema, archaeology, and art—moving from Monet to Marco Polo, early Japanese ink artists to Shakespeare and Goethe to James Bond.
By creating a new history of color, Fox reveals a new story about humans and our place in the universe: second only to language, color is the greatest carrier of cultural meaning in our world.
Customer Reviews
Fascinating, but uneven
First is first, I highly recommend this book to people interested in the cultural significance of colors. This book has an incredibly strong start, with riveting images and examples of the impact of color on environment, religion, expressionism, etc. Particularly great chapters are on the colors Black, Purple, and Yellow.
However, there are some colors that are given less love and research. Red, my personal favorite, was very narrow in its scope. In a bizarre change of pace, the chapter on the color white was a lengthy, seething, hateful rant about… race relations? It seems like not all chapters were “created equal”. That isn’t to say that white has not been an aesthetic of supremacy and bigotry - or that is not worth mentioning, but the chapter felt more like a character assassination of the color rather than an exploration of beauty/applications.
Overall, it’s still a wonderful read and worth picking up.