Is colour just a physiological phenomenon? Does it have an effect on feelings?
This vividly written book, the sequel to the award-winning Colour and Culture, is ultimately informed by the conviction that the meaning of colour lies in the particular historical context in which it is experienced and interpreted.
John Gage explores the mysteries of themes as diverse as the optical mixing techniques implicit in mosaic, colour-languages in Latin America at the time of the Spanish Conquest and the ideas of Goethe and Runge, Blake and Turner. For students and lecturers in the history of art and culture, for artists and designers, and for psychologists and scientists with a special interest in the subject, John Gage has produced a compelling study of the meaning of colour through the ages.
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.
