The World According to Color: A Cultural History

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.

Author: James Fox
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 04/12/2022
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.22lbs
Size: 9.40h x 6.20w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9781250278517

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 02/15/2022 pg. 60
Booklist 03/15/2022 pg. 28

About the Author
James Fox is an art historian and Fellow of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. His many acclaimed BBC television documentaries include programmes on the history of Cornish art, the British Renaissance and the culture and politics of Vienna in 1908, Paris in 1928 and New York in 1951. The World According to Color is his first book for a trade audience.