The Colours of Our Memories

What remains of the colours of our childhood? What are our memories of a blue rabbit, a red dress, a yellow bike – and were they really those colours? What colours do we associate with our student years, our first loves, our adult lives? How does colour leave its mark on memory?

In an attempt to answer these and other questions, Michel Pastoureau presents us with a journal about colours that covers half a century. Drawing on personal recollections, he retraces the recent history of colours through an exploration of fashion and clothing, everyday objects and practices, emblems and flags, sport, literature, museums and art.

This text – playful, poetic, nostalgic – records the life of both the author and his contemporaries. We live in a world increasingly bursting with colour, in which colour remains a focus for memory, a source of delight and, most of all, an invitation to dream.

“" The Colours of Our Memories is...history, memoir, semiotics, a study of material culture and perceptual change - all wrapped into an engagingly readable, accessible narrative full of intriguing topics that few people ever think about unprodded but will find invariably interesting, even fascinating." Consciousness, Literature and the Arts”

“The Colours of Our Memories is…history, memoir, semiotics, a study of material culture and perceptual change – all wrapped into an engagingly readable, accessible narrative full of intriguing topics that few people ever think about unprodded but will find invariably interesting, even fascinating.”
Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Michel Pastoureau is chair of the history of medieval symbolism at the École pratique des hautes études and one of the world’s leading authorities on the history of colours. His many previous books include Blue, Black, Green, Red and Yellow.

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