Colour and Culture

A groundbreaking, award-winning analysis of colour in Western culture, from the ancient Greeks to the late twentieth century by one of the most foremost authors on the subject.

What does the language of colour tell us? Where does one colour begin and another end? Is it a radiant visual stimulus, an intangible function of light, or a material substance to be moulded and arrayed? Colour is fundamental to art, yet so diverse that it has hardly ever been studied in a comprehensive way. Art historian John Gage considers every conceivable aspect of the subject in this groundbreaking analysis of colour in Western culture, from the ancient Greeks to the late twentieth century.

Gage describes the first theories of colour, articulated by Greek philosophers, and subsequent attempts by the Romans and their Renaissance disciples to organize it systematically or endow it with symbolic power. He unfolds its religious significance and its use in heraldry, as well as how Renaissance artists approached colour with the help of alchemists. He explores the analysis of the spectrum undertaken by Newton and continued in the nineteenth century by artists such as Seurat, traces the influence of Goethe's colour theory, and considers the extraordinary theories and practices that attempted to unite colour and music, or make colour into an entirely abstract language of its own.

The first-ever undertaking to suggest answers to many perennial questions about the role of colour in Western art and thought, this study throws fresh light on the hidden meanings of many familiar masterpieces.

'Exemplary ... wonderfully lucid' - Richard Wollheim, The Times Literary Supplement
'The standard for years to come' - Sir Ernst Gombrich, The Burlington Magazine
'A book of extraordinary erudition and beauty' - Sunday Telegraph
'No one interested in painting can afford not to study it' - London Review of Books
'I will mine Gage’s mountains of information for years to come' - Apollo
'Rarely has an academic mind made itself more approachable' - The Times

John Gage was an acknowledged international authority on the history of art and colour, and wrote many books on the subject, including Colour and Meaning, Colour in Art and the award-winning Colour and Culture, all published by Thames & Hudson. He was Head of the Department of History of Art at Cambridge University from 1992 to 1995.

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