The art of colour : the history of art in 39 pigments

The art of colour The history of art in 39 pigments

Kelly Grovier

Book - 2023

"A captivating new history of art told through the storied biographies of colors and pigments. In this refreshing approach to the history of color, Kelly Grovier takes readers on an exciting search for the intriguing and unusual. In Grovier's telling, a color's connotations are never fixed but are endlessly evolving. Knowledge of a pigment and its history can unlock meaning in the works that feature it. Grovier employs the term "artymology" to suggest that color is a linguistic device, where pigments stand in for syllables in art's language. Color is the site of invigorating conflict--a battleground where past and present, influence and originality, and superstition and science merge into meanings that complica...te and intensify our appreciation of a given work. How might it change our understanding of a well-known masterpiece like Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night to know that the intense yellow moon in that painting was sculpted from clumps of dehydrated urine from cows that were fed nothing but mango leaves? Or that the cobalt blue pigment in Van Gogh's sky shares a material bloodline with the glaze of Ming Dynasty porcelain? Consisting of ten chapters, each presenting a biography of a family of colors, this volume mines a rich vein of pigmentation from prehistoric cave painting to art of the present day. The book also includes beautifully designed features exploring important milestones in the history of color theory from the Enlightenment to the twentieth century."--Publisher's website.

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Subjects
Pigments > History.
Colors > History.
ART / History / General.
Published
New Haven : Yale University Press [2023]
Language
English
Main Author
Kelly Grovier (author)
Physical Description
255 pages : color illustrations ; 26 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 238-243) and index.
ISBN
9780300267785
  • Introduction Artymology
  • Red Red Ochre Carmine Rose Madder Vermilion Red Lead
  • Colourful Minds Isaac Newton's Opticks (1704)
  • Orange Orpiment Saffron Chrome Orange Cadmium Orange
  • Colourful Minds Tobias Mayer's The Affinity of Colour Commentary (1775)
  • Yellow Yellow Ochre Lead-tin Yellow Naples Yellow Indian Yellow Chrome Yellow Cadmium Yellow Arylide Yellow
  • Colourful Minds Mary Gartside's Essay on Light and Shade, on Colours, and on Composition in General (1805)
  • Green Verdigris Malachite Emerald Green Viridian
  • Colourful Minds Goethe's Theory of Colours (1810)
  • Blue Azurite Ultramarine Cobalt Blue Cerulean Prussian Blue Artificial Ultramarine International Klein Blue
  • Colourful Minds Philipp Otto Runge's Colour Sphere (1810)
  • Purple Tyrian Purple Mauve Cobalt Violet
  • Colourful Minds Michel Eugène Chevreul's The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours (1839)
  • Black Charcoal Bone Black
  • Colourful Minds Emily Noyes Vanderpoel's Color Problems (1902)
  • White Lead White Calcite Kaolin
  • Colourful Minds Albert Henry Munsell's Atlas of the Munsell Color System (1915)
  • Brown Umber Van Dyke Brown Mumia Excrement
  • Colourful Minds Johannes Itten's Utopia (1921)
  • Precious Metals Gold Silver
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • List of Illustrations
  • Index
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Choice Review

In this broadly conceived book, British writer Kelly Grovier proposes to examine the chromatic essence of painting, from the physical elements that produce color (pulverized lapis lazuli, for example) to color's emotional and symbolic resonance. In an introductory essay he addresses the very personal origins of the book and he follows that with ten sections, each brimming with detail and each devoted to a specific color and its shades as rendered in the visual arts. Grovier calls this approach "the biography of a pigment," and then adds the term "artymology" (by analogy with "etymology"), an indulgence one hopes will go unnoticed by lexicographers. The sections are separated by two-page excerpts about color from the works of notable thinkers, e.g., Newton and Goethe. In a book that ranges widely and subjectively, it is the author's prerogative to include or exclude. Kandinsky and Malevich are present (as they should be), but Rothko, curiously, is absent. Grovier reminds the reader that the colors on Giotto's brush ultimately came from an exploding star billions of years ago. The book's vast perspective suggests it would have been appropriate for the author to comment on the physiological means by which homo sapiens perceive color. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --William Craft Brumfield, Tulane University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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