The World According to Colour

A beguiling, human history of colour by one of art history's most exciting voices.

The world comes to us in colour. But colour lives as much in our imaginations as it does in our surroundings, as this scintillating book reveals. Each chapter immerses the reader in a single colour, drawing together stories from the histories of art and humanity to illuminate the meanings it has been given over the eras and around the globe.

Showing how artists, scientists, writers, philosophers, explorers, and inventors have both shaped and been shaped by these wonderfully myriad meanings, James Fox reveals how, through colour, we can better understand their cultures, as well as our own. Each chapter offers a fresh perspective on a different epoch, and together they form a vivid, exhilarating history of the world.

The World According to Colour argues that we have projected our hopes, anxieties, and obsessions onto colour for thousands of years. 'The history of colour, therefore, is also a history of humanity.'