Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction

A groundbreaking, award-winning analysis of color in Western culture, from the ancient Greeks to the late-twentieth century by one of the most foremost authors on the subject.

What does the language of color tell us? Where does one color begin and another end? Is it a radiant visual stimulus, an intangible function of light, or a material substance to be molded and arrayed? Color is fundamental to art, yet so diverse that it has hardly ever been studied in a comprehensive way. Art historian John Gage considers every conceivable aspect of the subject in this groundbreaking analysis of color in Western culture, from the ancient Greeks to the late twentieth century.

Gage describes the first theories of color, articulated by Greek philosophers, and subsequent attempts by the Romans and their Renaissance disciples to organize it systematically or endow it with symbolic power.