Color and Culture-Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction

From Publishers Weekly
In this searching, dazzlingly illustrated investigation of the experience of color in the West, Cambridge University art historian Gage explores color as a language of emotions, psychological meaning and religious significance. His 14 scholarly yet accessible essays, accompanied by 223 plates (more than half of which are in color), are full of arcane and wondrous lore, from ancient Rome's cult of purple (a hue associated with the ruling elite) to the symbology of rainbows, perceived correspondences between colors and music, and color symbolism in heraldry and alchemy. Certain themes re-emerge, such as the impact of color scientists Goethe and Newton on artists like Turner and Surat, and the popular notion of the Orient as a repository of colored, exotic stimuli and attitudes. The magnificent plates range from a fourth-century Egyptian mummy portrait to the color experiments of Kandinsky, Mondrian, Helen Frankenthaler, Sonia Delaunay, Kenneth Noland and Josef Albers.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
This book contains everything you wanted to know about color as a cultural construct, physical and optical property, and theoretical problem. Gage (art, Cambridge Univ.; J.M.W. Turner , LJ 7/87) has ranged very widely and come up with an extremely inclusive book dealing with nearly every Western, historical, and perceptual aspect of color. Trained at the Courtauld Institute of Art, Gage has an artist's direct sense of color and communicates it well in his writing, even when the illustration is in black and white. He has written a fascinating survey of this universal--but very subjective--aspect of art; no other title compares in depth and scope to this work. Recommended for general collections as well as for specialists, who will find much of interest in Gage's bibliographical excavations and careful looking.
- Jack Perry Brown, Art Inst. of Chicago Lib.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.