The World According to Color: A Cultural History

The World According to Color: A Cultural History

by James Fox
The World According to Color: A Cultural History

The World According to Color: A Cultural History

by James Fox

Hardcover

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Overview

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.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781250278517
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date: 04/12/2022
Pages: 320
Sales rank: 627,079
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

James Fox is Director of Studies in History of Art at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, and a BAFTA-nominated broadcaster. His many acclaimed BBC television documentaries include programs about British art, Japanese culture, and an enduringly popular history of color in art. The World According to Color is his first book for a trade audience.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction

1. Black: Out of Darkness
2. Red: Inventing Humanity
3. Yellow: Twilight of the Idols
4. Blue: Beyond the Horizon
5. White: Poisonous Purity
6. Purple: The Synthetic Rainbow
7. Green: Paradise Lost

The World According to Color
Notes
Further Reading

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