Black

by Pastoureau, Michel

• ISBN13: 9780691139302
• ISBN10: 069113930X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-10-27
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Black--favorite color of priests and penitents, artists and ascetics, fashion designers and fascists--has always stood for powerfully opposed ideas: authority and humility, sin and holiness, rebellion and conformity, wealth and poverty, good and bad. In this beautiful and richly illustrated book, the acclaimed author ofBluenow tells the fascinating social history of the color black in Europe.In the beginning was black, Michel Pastoureau tells us. The archetypal color of darkness and death, black was associated in the early Christian period with hell and the devil but also with monastic virtue. In the medieval era, black became the habit of courtiers and a hallmark of royal luxury. Black took on new meanings for early modern Europeans as they began to print words and images in black and white, and to absorb Isaac Newton's announcement that black was no color after all. During the romantic period, black was melancholy's friend, while in the twentieth century black (and white) came to dominate art, print, photography, and film, and was finally restored to the status of a true color.For Pastoureau, the history of any color must be a social history first because it is societies that give colors everything from their changing names to their changing meanings--and black is exemplary in this regard. In dyes, fabrics, and clothing, and in painting and other art works, black has always been a forceful--and ambivalent--shaper of social, symbolic, and ideological meaning in European societies.With its striking design and compelling text,Blackwill delight anyone who is interested in the history of fashion, art, media, or design.

Table of Contents

Introduction 11in the Beginning was Black from the Beginning to the Year 1000 19
Mythologies of Darkness	p. 21
From Darkness to Colors	p. 24
From Palette to Lexicon	p. 27
Death and Its Color	p. 30
The Black Bird	p. 36
Black, White, Red	p. 39
In The Devil's Palette Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries	p. 45
The Devil and His Images	p. 47
The Devil and His Colors	p. 51
A Disturbing Bestiary	p. 56
To Dispel the Darkness	p. 60
The Monks' Quarrel: White versus Black	p. 63
A New Color Order: The Coat of Arms	p. 68
Who Was the Black Knight?	p. 72
A Fashionable Color Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries	p. 77
The Colors of the Skin	p. 79
The Christianization of Dark Skin	p. 82
Jesus with the Dyer	p. 88
Dyeing in Black	p. 90
The Color's Moral Code	p. 95
The Luxury of Princes	p. 100
The Gray of Hope	p. 106
The Birth of The World In Black and White Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries	p. 113
Ink and Paper	p. 115
Color in Black and White	p. 119
Hachures and Guillochures	p. 122
The Color War	p. 124
The Protestant Dress Code	p. 130
A Very Somber Century	p. 134
The Return of the Devil	p. 136
New Speculations, New Classifications	p. 140
A New Order of Colors	p. 144
All The Colors of Black Eighteenth to Twenty-First Centuries	p. 151
The Triumph of Color	p. 153
The Age of Enlightenment	p. 159
The Poetics of Melancholy	p. 165
The Age of Coal and Factories	p. 170
Regarding Images	p. 176
A Modern Color	p. 180
A Dangerous Color?	p. 190
Notes	p. 196
Bibliography	p. 207
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.