Michel Pastoureau

Black—favourite colour 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 of Blue now tells the fascinating social history of the colour black in Europe. In the...

A beautifully illustrated visual and cultural history of the colour blue throughout the ages. Blue has had a long and topsy-turvy history in the Western world. While the ancient Greeks scorned it as ugly and barbaric, most Americans and Europeans now cite it as their favourite colour. In this fascinating history, the renowned medievalist Michel Pastoureau traces the changing meanings...

From the acclaimed author of Blue and other colour histories, the beautifully illustrated story of pink, from the first ancient pigments to Barbie. Pink has such powerful associations today that it's hard to imagine the colour could ever have meant anything different. But it's only since the introduction of the Barbie doll in 1959 that pink has become decisively feminised....

In this beautiful and richly illustrated book, the acclaimed author of Blue and Black presents a fascinating and revealing history of the colour green in European societies from prehistoric times to today. Examining the evolving place of green in art, clothes, literature, religion, science, and everyday life, Michel Pastoureau traces how culture has profoundly changed the perception and meaning of...

As a pigment, white is often thought to represent an absence of colour, but it is without doubt an important colour in its own right, just like red, blue, green, or yellow. Like them, white has its own intriguing history. In this richly illustrated book, Michel Pastoureau, a celebrated authority on the history of colours, presents a fascinating visual, social,...

What remains of the colours of our childhood? What are our memories of a blue rabbit, a red dress, a yellow bike – and were they really those colours? What colours do we associate with our student years, our first loves, our adult lives? How does colour leave its mark on memory? In an attempt to answer these and other...

A beautifully illustrated visual and cultural history of the colour red throughout the ages. The colour red has represented many things, from the life force and the divine to love, lust, and anger. Up through the Middle Ages, red held a place of privilege in the Western world. For many cultures, red was not just one colour of many but...

A renowned authority on the history of colour and the author of celebrated volumes on blue, black, green, and red now traces the visual, social, and cultural history of yellow. Focusing on European societies, with comparisons from East Asia, India, Africa, and South America, he tells the intriguing story of the colour's evolving place in art, religion, fashion, literature, and...

The oldest discovered statue, fashioned some fifteen to twenty thousand years ago, is of a bear. The lion was not always king. From antiquity to the Middle Ages, the bear's centrality in cults and mythologies left traces in European languages, literatures, and legends from the Slavic East to Celtic Britain. Historian Michel Pastoureau considers how this once venerated creature was...