Black : the history of a color

The Resource Black : the history of a color
Label
Black : the history of a color
Title remainder
the history of a color
Statement of responsibility
Michel Pastoureau ; [translated from the French by Jody Gladding]
Creator
Contributor
Subject
Language
  • eng
  • fre
  • eng
Summary
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 book, the author of Blue now tells the fascinating social history of the color black in Europe. In the beginning was black, he 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 the author, 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
Member of
Cataloging source
DLC
Dewey number
155.9/1145
Illustrations
illustrations
Index
no index present
LC call number
BF789.C7
LC item number
P3813 2009
Literary form
non fiction
Nature of contents
bibliography

Context

Context of Black : the history of a color

Work of

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