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Sign up todayThe World According to Colour
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Learn moreBrought to you by Penguin.
A beguiling cultural history of colour by the BAFTA nominated broadcaster and art historian James Fox
The subject of this book is humankind's extraordinary relationship with colour. It is composed of a series of voyages, ranging across the world and throughout history, which reveal the meanings that have been attached to the colours we see around us and the ways these have shaped our culture and imagination. It takes seven primary colours - black, red, yellow, blue, white, purple and green - and uncovers behind each a root idea, based on visual resemblances or properties so rudimentary as to be common to all societies.
The book traces these meanings to show how they changed and multiplied, the role that they have played in our culture and history, and how understanding them allows us to see many of the milestones in the history of art - from Bronze Age gold-work to Turner, Titian to Yves Klein - in a new way. It proceeds by stories, which cumulatively tell another, larger one: a history of the world from the black nothing which preceded existence to the birth of our red-blooded species; the gilded gods who animated the world in antiquity to the blue horizons which framed the Age of Discovery; the pristine aspirations of Enlightenment, the technicolour innovation which fuelled the Industrial Revolution and the colour which most embodies the environmental crisis which now faces us.
'This book is a triumph. James Fox's passionate and illuminating exploration of the extraordinary relationship we have with colour is itself extraordinary. It is an intellectual feast as well as a visual one - a true biography of colour which will delight readers.' Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes
©2023 James Fox (P)2023 Penguin Audio
James Fox (Author)
James Fox is Director of Studies in History of Art at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and a BAFTA-nominated broadcaster. He is the author of The World According to Colour: A Cultural History, which was chosen as a Book of the Year by the Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and Spectator. His many acclaimed BBC television documentaries include programmes about British art, Japanese culture, the connections between art and nature, and the history of colour. He is also an advisor to the Loewe Craft Foundation and a Trustee of the Marchmont Makers Foundation, which supports arts and crafts practitioners across the Scottish Borders and beyond, aiming to inspire creativity across the arts, crafts, business and social enterprise.
James Fox (Reader)
James Fox was born in Washington DC in 1945 and educated in England. He worked as a journalist in Africa and then in England, for the Sunday Times and the Observer, and has written for numerous other publications. White Mischief was made into a movie starring Greta Scacchi and Charles Dance.
James Fox (Author)
James Fox is Director of Studies in History of Art at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and a BAFTA-nominated broadcaster. He is the author of The World According to Colour: A Cultural History, which was chosen as a Book of the Year by the Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and Spectator. His many acclaimed BBC television documentaries include programmes about British art, Japanese culture, the connections between art and nature, and the history of colour. He is also an advisor to the Loewe Craft Foundation and a Trustee of the Marchmont Makers Foundation, which supports arts and crafts practitioners across the Scottish Borders and beyond, aiming to inspire creativity across the arts, crafts, business and social enterprise.
James Fox (Reader)
James Fox was born in Washington DC in 1945 and educated in England. He worked as a journalist in Africa and then in England, for the Sunday Times and the Observer, and has written for numerous other publications. White Mischief was made into a movie starring Greta Scacchi and Charles Dance.
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