Color and Meaning: Art, Science, and Symbolism
Is color just a
physiological reaction, a sensation resulting from different wave lengths of
light on receptors in our eyes? Does color have an effect on our feelings? The
phenomenon of color is examined in extraordinary new ways in John Gage's latest
book. His pioneering study is informed by the conviction that color is a
contingent, historical occurrence whose meaning, like language, lies in the
particular contexts in which it is experienced and interpreted.
Color and Meaning
Gage covers topics as
diverse as the optical mixing techniques implicit in mosaic; medieval
color-symbolism; the equipment of the manuscript illuminator's workshop, the
color languages and color practices of Latin America at the time of the Spanish
Conquest; the earliest history of the prism; and the color ideas of Goethe and
Runge, Blake and Turner, Seurat and Matisse.
From the perspective of
the history of science, Gage considers the bearing of Newton's optical
discoveries on painting, the chemist Chevreul's contact with painters and the
growing interest of experimental psychologists in the topic of color in the
late nineteenth century, particularly in relation to synaesthesia.
He includes an invaluable
overview of the twentieth-century literature that bears on the historical
interpretation of color in art. Gage's explorations further extend the concepts
he addressed in his prize-winning book, Color and Culture.
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