The World According to Colour: A Cultural History

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What many of these metaphors share, and what they share with ancient creation stories, is the notion of darkness as deprivation. Four centuries after the death of Christ, Augustine—who had converted from Manichaeism to Christianity in his early thirties (much to his mother’s relief)—argued that God had made everything, and everything he had made was good. It was a neat and reassuring syllogism, but it raised an inevitable question: if both propositions were true, whence came evil? If God had created everything, he had also made evil; if he hadn’t, then the universe wasn’t entirely of his making. To resolve the conundrum Augustine asserted that evil was simply an absence of goodness, before comparing it to other “privational” conditions such as silence and darkness: The first narrative exploration of humans' extraordinary relationship with color, and the history of its meanings, associations, and properties that span cultures, continents, and languages. In addition to the cultural history of art, as the title suggests, there is a mix of colour theory, the biology of how humans can recognise colour, as well the chemical make up of substances that make them a certain colour. It’s impressive that such a wide range of information can be contained in a single book, and with such a lightness of touch, but the author’s style is fluid and vivid and the book is so well researched that I found it a joy to read.

Neseniai pasakojau vyrui, kad supratau, kokios spalvos man šiuo metu atrodo gražiausios. Geltona, gesinta žalia, oranžinė, ruda, garstyčių. Dar sakiau, kad nesuprantu, aA beguiling cultural history of colour by the BAFTA nominated broadcaster and art historian James Fox In less skilled hands this might have felt padded, but Fox weaves history and science into the story along with art and anthropology so that it is full of detail and interest. His description of how the Japanese master Sesshū created an inkwash landscape made me long to see the work, and I’m aching to get to the British Museum to see the painstaking care that goes into Chinese lacquerware. Considering that colour is notoriously difficult to understand, let alone describe, Fox has done a sterling job. The World According to Colour tells a compelling story yet is also a book you can happily dip in and out of. Though it doesn’t bring us much closer to a true understanding of colour, it gives a riveting account of how our experience of it has shaped our understanding of the world.

Through meticulous research and authoritative writing, Fox helps us to see the world around us in a different light. Green Chlorophyll and agriculture. Gardens and the color most associated with Islam. Going green, the environmental movements and the various green political parties.While James focuses on the colours we can see the book could be expanded to cover the wavelengths beyond our sight that other creatures can perceive - infra-red and ultraviolet. Finally, while difficult to do, a closing summary bringing it all together would have rounded off the book nicely. In the chapter on purple, we learn how this vibrant colour of the rich and powerful was brought to the masses thanks to William Henry Perkin, who in the spring of 1856 accidentally discovered the first synthetic purple dye. His breakthrough brought “mauve mania” to the British Isles and laid the foundation for the synthetic organic chemicals industry. But the love affair didn’t last; by the end of the 19th century, as the industrial revolution increasingly took its toll on the environment, the colour came to be associated with toxicity and pollution. Looking at the same colours from the perspectives of nature, science and psychology gives us further insights to how important colour can be to life. From the green chlorophyll of plants to the red haemoglobin of our literal life blood, how nature uses colour to attract mates and pollinators, warn of danger and camouflage, the science of how we see colour and how we can use it to reflect and affect our moods and wellbeing.