Colour And Meaning: Art, Science And Symbolism

Description:
Is colour just a physiological phenomenon? Does colour have an effect on feelings? This study argues that the meaning of colour, like language, lies in the particular historical contexts in which it is experienced. Three essays introduce the subject, and the remaining chapters follow themes of colour chronologically, from the early Middle Ages to the 20th century. Topics covered include medieval colour-symbolism, the earliest history of the prism, Newton's optical discoveries, 19th-century psychologists and colour, and 20th-century literature on colour in art.

Table of Contents:
Part 1: the contexts of colour; colour and culture; colour in art and its literature. Part 2: colour in history - relative and absolute; colour-words and colour-patches; Ghiberti and light; color Colorado; the fool's paradise; Newton and painting; Blake's Newton; magilphs and mystery; Turner as a colourist; 'Two different worlds' - Runge, Goethe and the sphere of colour; mood indigo - from the Blue Flower to the Blue Rider; Chevreul between classicism and romanticism; the technique of Seurat; Seurat's silence; Matisse's black light; colour as language in early abstract painting; a psychological background for early modern colour; making sense of colour - the synaesthetic dimension.