Neseniai pasakojau vyrui, kad supratau, kokios spalvos man šiuo metu atrodo gražiausios. Geltona, gesinta žalia, oranžinė, ruda, garstyčių. Dar sakiau, kad nesuprantu, a Animals inhabit very different chromatic worlds too. Most mammals are red-green colour-blind; bulls might be famous for their hatred of red capes, but the colour itself is invisible to them – they are actually enraged by the fabric’s movements. By contrast, most reptiles, amphibians, insects and birds perceive more colours than us. Bees see ultraviolet light, discerning elaborate patterns in flowers that we cannot perceive, while snakes see infrared radiation, detecting the warm bodies of prey from a distance. People generally name only the colours they consider socially or culturally important Many, many books have been written on colour, with John Gage’s Colour and Culture, a staple of student reading lists since its publication in 1993, a rare treasure among numerous dry treatises. It was only a matter of time before the work of Robert Rauschenberg would again receive a star billing in Paris, and there could be no better venue than the Centre Pompidou. The reason is that the work literally benefits from the implied temporariness of the 'rooms' at the Centre. More recently, efforts have been made to corral the panoply of exotic stories surrounding artists’ pigments into accounts that serve the general reader as well as the specialist: some have been welcome additions, others have dwelt overly on the familiar tales of cows’ urine (used to create yellow pigment), and spectacularly precious ultramarine blue.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.Through meticulous research and authoritative writing, Fox helps us to see the world around us in a different light. This is of course Genesis 1:1, according to the King James version (first published just a few years before Fludd’s own masterwork). This justly celebrated translation is poetic and portentous in all the right ways, but it gets something very wrong: “darkness” is far too elegant a word for the primeval gloom envisioned by its creators. The original Hebrew was khoshekh () —an ugly, guttural noun that had to be coughed out of the throat like phlegm. This darkness is violent, dissonant, feral. The text is incredibly ambitious and certainly successful in its endeavour. Fox traces a long period of art history, from the Bronze Age to present day. The World According to Colour explores many cultures and explores how the meaning of colour can change in different societies. The World According to Colour: A Cultural History – book review Oddly, a squashed fly triggered art historian James Fox’s fascination with colour and, in this ambitious study, he takes us on an epic journey showing the significance of various colours across the ages

The vocabulary of these languages isn’t dictated by the prismatic spectrum but, once again, by what is happening inside their speakers’ heads. People generally name only the colours they consider socially or culturally important. The Aztecs, who were enthusiastic farmers, used more than a dozen words for green; the Mursi cattleherders of Ethiopia have 11 colour terms for cows, and none for anything else. In the chapter on purple, we learn how this vibrant colour of the rich and powerful was brought to the masses thanks to William Henry Perkin, who in the spring of 1856 accidentally discovered the first synthetic purple dye. His breakthrough brought “mauve mania” to the British Isles and laid the foundation for the synthetic organic chemicals industry. But the love affair didn’t last; by the end of the 19th century, as the industrial revolution increasingly took its toll on the environment, the colour came to be associated with toxicity and pollution.Hand stencil from Cueva de las Manos, Perito Moreno, Argentina, c. 5,000 BCE. Red pigment on stone. Humanity’s twin fascinations with gold and the sun are explored in a chapter on yellow, via Olafur Eliasson’s Turbine Hall installation at Tate Modern, the Aztecs, the Incas and Norse mythology.

The text refers to images, which I mostly haven’t seen as they weren’t included in my advance copy, but they sound well-chosen and will make the published book something special. Unsurprisingly, artists and paintings play a prominent part in the story, from the makers of those unsettling red handprints in Chauvet Cave to Howard Hodgkin, whose masterly Leaf (2007–9) consists of a single brushstroke of emerald green that took a few seconds to execute and two years of mental preparation. ‘Colour is colour,’ Hodgkin once said. ‘You can’t control it’ – although Leaf showed the artist making a pretty good stab at this. Each chapter is dedicated to one of seven “simple colours” – a number proposed by Aristotle and seconded by Isaac Newton – and the book’s bold claim is to present nothing less than a history of the world according to colour.I really can’t recommend this book highly enough and would recommend it to any reader who is interested in colour, art, and human history. There is so much richness in this book that it’s impossible not to find a new idea or to see a familiar colour, in an entirely new way. The World According to Colour: A Cultural History by James Fox is published by Penguin. Further reading If red is the colour we all possess, then yellow is very much the one for which we yearn, whether it be the sun’s golden rays, the golden spice of saffron, or, indeed, gold itself. Of course, none of these is truly yellow, and it is only when Fox turns to art history that the hue, which was JMW Turner’s favourite, comes properly into focus. Indeed, Turner used more yellow pigments than any artist and it is not surprising to find that others have become associated with specific colours. The Red chapter was talking a lot about cave paintings, but it really didn't relate to the color red specifically, and how red has been linked with blood. The next subheading was called "Blood Offerings" and I honestly came here to read about color and not blood.

After reading this book, I see the world differently. As the seasons change, I pay closer attention to the leaves slowly changing from green to orange to brown. I notice the blueness of the sky. I notice the different shades of green on my blouse. This book captures the beauty in colour and has allowed me to reflect on my relationship with different colours. I cannot recommend this book enough and I think it is a book everyone can gain something from. I really enjoyed this book. The subject is so vast and rich and I finished it curious to learn more in so many ways.While James focuses on the colours we can see the book could be expanded to cover the wavelengths beyond our sight that other creatures can perceive - infra-red and ultraviolet. Finally, while difficult to do, a closing summary bringing it all together would have rounded off the book nicely. It’s difficult to highlight particular sections of this book when it covers such a broad range of sources and such a wide span of human history. But particularly the chapter on blue was a standout to me. The chapter discusses colour theory, the origins of ultramarine pigment, how the renaissance master of colour, Titian utilised this pigment to create the masterpiece of Bacchus and Ariadne and then how Yves Klein developed a pigment medium in the 1950s to show off the pigment in all it’s dazzling brilliance and tried to paint the whole world in International Klein Blue. It’s a whirlwind of colour, history and ideas and the most enjoyable way to read about art, when different ideas and theories can be connected across countries and centuries and artworks can be reinvigorated with fresh perspectives.