The World According to Colour: A Cultural History

Description

'An intellectual and visual feast - and a true biography of colour' - Edmund de Waal The world comes to us in colour. But colour lives as much in our imaginations as it does in our surroundings, as this scintillating book reveals. Each chapter immerses the reader in a single colour, drawing together stories from the histories of art and humanity to illuminate the meanings it has been given over the eras and around the globe. Showing how artists, scientists, writers, philosophers, explorers and inventors have both shaped and been shaped by these wonderfully myriad meanings, James Fox reveals how, through colour, we can better understand their cultures, as well as our own. Each chapter offers a fresh perspective on a different epoch, and together they form a vivid, exhilarating history of the world. 'We have projected our hopes, anxieties and obsessions onto colour for thousands of years,' Fox writes. 'The history of colour, therefore, is also a history of humanity.'

James Fox is Director of Studies in History of Art at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and a BAFTA-nominated broadcaster. His many acclaimed BBC television documentaries include programmes about British art, Japanese culture and an enduringly popular history of colour in art.

admirable ... The World According to Colour is a brilliant cultural history ... This intelligent, vividly written book is full of such black, red, yellow, blue, white, purple and green nuggets. -- Laura Freeman * The Times * Fox glides into intellectual spaces; colour becomes a philosophical feast - astrophyscis, the origins of civilisation, a palette of moral associations. Though dazzling, everything has a point: when Fox shoots, he scores. You never see it coming, then suddenly all the pieces fit together as though they were meant to be -- Ed Smith * New Statesman Books of the Year * a tour de force ... he weaves together the historical, cultural and scientific background to provide context for a succession of bravura insights ... this is a brilliant book -- Honor Clerk * The Spectator * In this compelling book, James Fox shows that the meanings connected to particular colours aren't arbitrary but are instead materially, socially and culturally determined ... One of a flurry of recent books on colour, Fox's is distinguished by his broad historical approach and by the diversity of perspectives and sources ... The greatest pleasure of this book is the way Fox's essays move fluently between the material, moral and historical ... This is a book that makes you want to paint. -- Joad Raymond * BBC History Magazine * the book is a pleasure... a compelling and elegant...a rare achievement - a scholarly reference work that invites reading for pleasure. -- Florence Hallett * i news * For once, no problem with Christmas presents this year. The World According to Colour by James Fox is a brilliantly fluent and readable history of colour, galloping across a wide cultural and scientific landscape. -- Honor Clerk * Spectator Books of the Year * fascinating...In this book (Fox) has gifted each of us a manual to navigate and enjoy the extraordinary design of the world around us. -- Anna Galbraith * Mail on Sunday *