The World According to Colour: A Cultural History (Paperback)
James Fox (author)Published: 06/04/2023
'Extraordinary. An intellectual feast as well as a visual one'
Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes
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 colour 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.'
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780141976655
Number of pages: 320
Weight: 283 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 19 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
A brilliantly fluent and readable history of colour -- Honor Clerk * Spectator (Books of the Year) *
Fairly shimmers with Fox's eye for arresting facts and anecdotes -- Kassia St Clair * Times Literary Supplement *
Intelligent, vividly written ... I'm going to buy three copies -- Laura Freeman * The Times *
Flits with enthusiasm and lightly worn learning from Bronze Age gold-workers to Turner, Titian to Yves Klein -- Simon Ings * Daily Telegraph (Books of the Year) *
Colour becomes a philosophical feast - astrophysics, the origins of civilisation, a palette of moral associations -- Ed Smith * New Statesman (Books of the Year) *
A manual to navigate and enjoy the extraordinary design of the world around us -- Anna Galbraith * Mail on Sunday *
Leads down some wonderful rabbit holes -- Chris Allnutt * Financial Times *
A book that makes you want to paint -- Joad Raymond * BBC History Magazine *
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“A Work of Dazzling Brilliance.”
Having been a fan of James Fox’s work and his thoughts on colour since watching his series on the subject in 2012, this book was my most anticipated release of 2021. The series, made for the BBC all those years ago... More
“A wide ranging, utterly fascinating read, not just for art lovers”
This is an amazing wide ranging book. I stand in awe of how much James Fox has packed in to this one book. and how well he has structured it. As he says at the end of the book
"The history of colour, therefore,...
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“A love letter not just to colour but to the world itself”
James Fox writes beautifully. In The World According to Colour, he’s engaging even when dealing with technicalities such as explaining the wavelengths of light and describing haemoglobin’s role in the blood. He... More
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