Colour in Art

A wide-ranging and engaging introduction to the place and power of color in life and art by John Gage, author of the award-winning Color and Culture.

The complex phenomenon of color has received detailed attention from the perspectives of physics, chemistry, physiology, psychology, linguistics, and philosophy. However, the people who work most closely with colorartistshave rarely been canvassed for their opinions on this mysterious subject.

John Gage sets out to address this omission by focusing on the thoughts and practices of artists. Color in Art is concerned with the history of color, but is not itself a history; instead each chapter develops a theme from a different scientific discipline, as seen from the viewpoint of such diverse artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Wassily Kandinsky, Sonia Delaunay, Bridget Riley, and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri.