Blue: The History of a Color
Author(s): Michel Pastoureau
Blue has a long and topsy-turvy history in the Western world. Once considered a hot colour, it is now icy cool. The ancient Greeks scorned it as ugly and barbaric, but most Americans and Europeans now pick it as their favorite colour. This history traces the changing meanings of blue from its rare appearances in prehistoric art to its international ubiquity today in blue jeans and Gauloises cigarette packs. Any history of colour is, above all, a social history. Pastoureau investigates how the ever-changing role of blue in society has been reflected in manuscripts, stained glass, heraldry, clothing, paintings, and popular culture. Beginning with the almost total absence of blue from ancient Western art and language, the story moves to medieval Europe. As people began to associate blue with the Virgin Mary, the colour entered the Church despite the efforts of chromophobic prelates. Blue was reborn as a royal colour in the 12th century and functioned as a formidable political and military force through the French Revolution. As blue triumphed in the modern era, new shades were created, and blue became the colour of romance.
Finally, Pastoureau follows blue into contemporary times, when military clothing gave way to the everyday uniform of blue jeans, and blue became the universal and unifying colour of the Earth as seen from space. Strikingly illustrated with 100 colour plates, "Blue" tells the fascinating history of our favourite colour and the cultures that have hated it, loved it, and created great art with it.
Product Information
Michel Pastoureau paints a massive canvas in which the history of one color becomes the history of culture itself. This is a study not of color as mere matter but as idea--presenting thousands of years of thinking in blue. -- Michael Camille, author of "The Medieval Art of Love and Glorious Visions" Michel Pastoureau brilliantly uses the shifting meanings of blue to challenge a whole spectrum of assumptions about color and its symbolic value... Thanks to this study, which is certain to become a classic, blue will never look the same again. -- Jori Finkel and Jonathon S. Keats
A miracle of poetry in the midst of academic rigidity. -- Telerama ... a rich volume, intelligently illustrated... With sure-footed scholarship, trenchant opinions, Michel Pastoureau goes beyond a perfunctory visit: he makes us realize the importance of this material and avoids the errors of a number of other historians. -- Le Monde ... a delicious mix of erudition and lighthearted fun. -- Livres Pastoureau's text moves us through one fascinating area of activity after another... The jacket, cover and end-papers of this luscious book are appropriately blue; its double-columned text breathes easily in the space of its pages; it is so well sewn it opens flat at any place; and fascinating, aptly chosen color plates, not confined to the title color, will please even those eyes denied the good luck of being blue. -- William Gass, Los Angeles Times Book Review Blue is both prettily produced and whimsically enjoyable. -- Julian Bell, Times Literary Supplement Michel Pastoureau takes us into territory that could be made to feel impossibly dense and absurdly specialized. To his credit, the tour is brisk and challenging. -- John Loughery, Washington Post Book World A generous, gorgeous book full of nearly 100 historical and artistic plates, all illustrating the meaning and role of the color blue in Western history... Pastoureau has created something rare: a coffee table book that is also a good read. And not just a good read, but a compelling read. -- Brian Bouldrey, Chicago Tribune Blue ... is confident, stylish, well-turned out... The book's sapphire glow will grace the most discriminating coffee tables. -- Jane Gardam, Spectator This beautifully illustrated book is well written and informative, and makes an important contribution to the social history of art. -- Choice In this beguiling and beautiful mixture of art book and social history, the distinguished French scholar shows how the rarest of all colors became the commonest. -- Emma Hagestadt and Boyd Tonkin, The Independent Magazine The material history of a certain section of the spectrum, from the costly tones of the Virgin's cloak to uniforms, Picasso and jeans. History can make you blind, but some historians can make you see again. -- James Davidson, Daily Telegraph
General Fields
- :
- : Princeton University Press
- : Princeton University Press
- : 1.228
- : 01 September 2001
- : 238mm X 225mm X 23mm
- : United States
- : books
Special Fields
- : 216
- : Hardback
- : Michel Pastoureau
