The World According to Colour

James Fox is Director of Studies in History of Art at Emmanuel College Cambridge and a BAFTA-nominated broadcaster. His many acclaimed BBC television documentaries include programmes about British art Japanese culture and an enduringly popular history of colour in art. A book to brighten the dullest days A brilliantly fluent and readable history of colour Fairly shimmers with Fox's eye for arresting facts and anecdotes Intelligent vividly written ... I'm going to buy three copies Flits with enthusiasm and lightly worn learning from Bronze Age gold-workers to Turner Titian to Yves Klein Colour becomes a philosophical feast - astrophysics the origins of civilisation a palette of moral associations A manual to navigate and enjoy the extraordinary design of the world around us Leads down some wonderful rabbit holes A book that makes you want to paint <p><b>'Extraordinary. A</b><b>n intellectual feast as well as a </b><b>visual one</b><b>'<br></b><b>Edmund de Waal author of <i>The Hare with Amber Eyes</i></b><br><br>The world comes to us in colour. But colour lives as much in our imaginations as it does in our surroundings as this scintillating book reveals. Each chapter immerses the reader in a single colour drawing together stories from the histories of art and humanity to illuminate the meanings it has been given over the eras and around the globe. Showing how artists scientists writers philosophers explorers and inventors have both shaped and been shaped by these wonderfully myriad meanings James Fox reveals how through colour we can better understand their cultures as well as our own. Each colour offers a fresh perspective on a different epoch and together they form a vivid exhilarating history of the world. 'We have projected our hopes anxieties and obsessions onto colour for thousands of years' Fox writes. 'The history of colour therefore is also a history of humanity.'</p> <p><b>'Extraordinary. A</b><b>n intellectual feast as well as a </b><b>visual one</b><b>'<br></b><b>Edmund de Waal author of <i>The Hare with Amber Eyes</i></b><br><br>The world comes to us in colour. But colour lives as much in our imaginations as it does in our surroundings as this scintillating book reveals. Each chapter immerses the reader in a single colour drawing together stories from the histories of art and humanity to illuminate the meanings it has been given over the eras and around the globe. Showing how artists scientists writers philosophers explorers and inventors have both shaped and been shaped by these wonderfully myriad meanings James Fox reveals how through colour we can better understand their cultures as well as our own. Each colour offers a fresh perspective on a different epoch and together they form a vivid exhilarating history of the world. 'We have projected our hopes anxieties and obsessions onto colour for thousands of years' Fox writes. 'The history of colour therefore is also a history of humanity.'</p>