Black: The History of a Color - Hardcover

Michel Pastoureau

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 069113930X ISBN 13: 9780691139302

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2008

Synopsis

Black--favorite color of priests and penitents, artists and ascetics, fashion designers and fascists--has always stood for powerfully opposed ideas: authority and humility, sin and holiness, rebellion and conformity, wealth and poverty, good and bad. In this beautiful and richly illustrated book, the acclaimed author of Blue now tells the fascinating social history of the color black in Europe.

In the beginning was black, Michel Pastoureau tells us. The archetypal color of darkness and death, black was associated in the early Christian period with hell and the devil but also with monastic virtue. In the medieval era, black became the habit of courtiers and a hallmark of royal luxury. Black took on new meanings for early modern Europeans as they began to print words and images in black and white, and to absorb Isaac Newton's announcement that black was no color after all. During the romantic period, black was melancholy's friend, while in the twentieth century black (and white) came to dominate art, print, photography, and film, and was finally restored to the status of a true color.

For Pastoureau, the history of any color must be a social history first because it is societies that give colors everything from their changing names to their changing meanings--and black is exemplary in this regard. In dyes, fabrics, and clothing, and in painting and other art works, black has always been a forceful--and ambivalent--shaper of social, symbolic, and ideological meaning in European societies.

With its striking design and compelling text, Black will delight anyone who is interested in the history of fashion, art, media, or design.

About this title

Review:

Praise for Michel Pastoureau's Blue: "A generous, gorgeous book full of nearly 100 historical and artistic plates, all illustrating the meaning and role of the color blue in Western history... Pastoureau has created something rare: a coffee table book that is also a good read. And not just a good read, but a compelling read. --Brian Bouldrey, Chicago Tribune

Praise for Michel Pastoureau's Blue: "A generous, gorgeous book full of nearly 100 historical and artistic plates, all illustrating the meaning and role of the color blue in Western history. . . . Pastoureau has created something rare: a coffee table book that is also a good read. And not just a good read, but a compelling read.
(Brian Bouldrey Chicago Tribune )

Praise for Michel Pastoureau's Blue: "Pastoureau's text moves us through one fascinating area of activity after another. . . . The jacket, cover and end-papers of this luscious book are appropriately blue; its double-columned text breathes easily in the space of its pages; it is so well sewn it opens flat at any place; and fascinating, aptly chosen color plates, not confined to the title color, will please even those eyes denied the good luck of being blue.
(liam H. Gass, author of "Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry ) --Liam H. Gass

About the Author:

Michel Pastoureau is a historian and director of studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes de la Sorbonne in Paris. He is the author of many books, including "Blue: The History of a Color" (Princeton) and "The Devil's Cloth: A History of Stripes".

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 069113930X
• ISBN 13: 9780691139302
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 216