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skeddy's review against another edition
I liked the story and the way that each culture is explored in relation to color. Unfortunately I had to give the copy I was reading back to my art teacher.
tanyarobinson's review against another edition
4.0
I have studied a fair bit of art history, but I've never thought much about what it took to create the colorful pigments on the canvases in all those museums. I've read books about fashion, and enjoyed exhibits of historical clothing, yet I've given only a passing thought to how artisans turned cloth a rainbow of colors. Victoria Finlay's micro history of the color palette chases around the world looking for the origins of the earliest dyes and pigments, and it's pretty fascinating.
I learned about blues from lapis lazuli rocks, reds from cochineal beetles, indigo from bushes, green from a chemical reaction involving wood ash and kaolin, yellow from saffron, and on and on. I was particularly interested to find out which historical coloring agents were poisonous (obviously the lead that brought such brilliant whites onto the canvas, the greens in arsenic-laced wallpapers, and some of the cosmetics from early eras). It was fun to learn how secret recipes were kept, and how intellectual espionage was a regular game of the trade.
One of the things that stood out for me from the book was the discussion of how paintings (and other painted and dyed items) have changed with time. I always assumed the darkened altar pieces and canvases I've seen were dark just because they were dirty and coated with pollution. I had no idea certain pigments reacted with others, and would darken and chemically change with time. I was also surprised to learn some artists used colors they knew would quickly fade because they were more concerned with with the short-term product (J.M.W. Turner, I'm talking to you - you knew your watery sunset scenes would lose all their reds in just a few years, and that what hangs in the National Gallery in London is not at all what it started out to be).
BUT - and it's a big but - I lost my enthusiasm for the subject as the chapters went on and on. I loved the beginning. I was entranced through the chapters on black and white and red, but as we moved through the spectrum I got a little bogged down. Finlay went so many places - the Australian outback, China, Afghanistan, the Caribbean, Spain, India, etc etc etc - looking for the stories behind the colors. While I would have appreciated every one individually, I got tired of them collectively. I think this book could best be appreciated read drawn out over a longer time period, with a chapter soaked up here and there. There is such good information, and the author put so much time and effort to gathering all her stories. And her writing itself is so engaging. I just pushed through it too hurriedly to keep in touch with that engagement.
Anyway, 3.75 stars rounded up to a 4.
I learned about blues from lapis lazuli rocks, reds from cochineal beetles, indigo from bushes, green from a chemical reaction involving wood ash and kaolin, yellow from saffron, and on and on. I was particularly interested to find out which historical coloring agents were poisonous (obviously the lead that brought such brilliant whites onto the canvas, the greens in arsenic-laced wallpapers, and some of the cosmetics from early eras). It was fun to learn how secret recipes were kept, and how intellectual espionage was a regular game of the trade.
One of the things that stood out for me from the book was the discussion of how paintings (and other painted and dyed items) have changed with time. I always assumed the darkened altar pieces and canvases I've seen were dark just because they were dirty and coated with pollution. I had no idea certain pigments reacted with others, and would darken and chemically change with time. I was also surprised to learn some artists used colors they knew would quickly fade because they were more concerned with with the short-term product (J.M.W. Turner, I'm talking to you - you knew your watery sunset scenes would lose all their reds in just a few years, and that what hangs in the National Gallery in London is not at all what it started out to be).
BUT - and it's a big but - I lost my enthusiasm for the subject as the chapters went on and on. I loved the beginning. I was entranced through the chapters on black and white and red, but as we moved through the spectrum I got a little bogged down. Finlay went so many places - the Australian outback, China, Afghanistan, the Caribbean, Spain, India, etc etc etc - looking for the stories behind the colors. While I would have appreciated every one individually, I got tired of them collectively. I think this book could best be appreciated read drawn out over a longer time period, with a chapter soaked up here and there. There is such good information, and the author put so much time and effort to gathering all her stories. And her writing itself is so engaging. I just pushed through it too hurriedly to keep in touch with that engagement.
Anyway, 3.75 stars rounded up to a 4.
orangejenny's review against another edition
3.0
This was a struggle to get through, yet I ended up being a fan of it, as much of the author's style as of the content. I read it on a trip, without other reading material available, and doubt I'd have gotten through it otherwise. The author tries to foreshadow and to pull different stories together with endless introductions along the lines of, "Who knew that my search for purple would involve a French aristocrat, a humble mollusk, and a pair of star-crossed lovers?" This doesn't work especially well, but with a subject as broad as color, it's difficult to blame the author for the lack of narrative. Each chapter is dedicated to a color, working through the rainbow from red to violet, which is as good a way as any to categorize the content. Within each chapter, the facts, theories, and stories are a mishmash of people, places, and eras. The lack of connection between one chapter (or page) and the next made the book quite difficult to get into.
A good deal of the book describes the author's own experiences traveling to research color. It's not clear when all of them took places, but they cover enough ground that I'm guessing that they took quite some time and that some were not directly for the purpose of this book but were earlier trips inspired by the author's personal interest in the subject. The blue chapter's story of her traveling to Afghanistan...in 2001...for the sake of seeing in person what are, essentially, blue rocks, was about where I decided that she's unhealthily fixated on this subject, but that I could appreciate her obsession. Her references to home experiments with dyes and pigments (who knew how many colors involve urine in the production?) had a similar effect. I grew to imagine her as a journalist handling her assignments while squeezing in side trips to seek out mango-leaf-eating cows or cochineal insects, toting around a bag of color-related notes and paraphernalia, smelling faintly of, well, pee.
If there's a theme to the book, it's the physical work and limitations involved in making art, particularly in different eras. I didn't know anything about challenges like how few natural ways we have to produce green, or that creating a dye isn't the same thing as creating a pigment. It hadn't occurred to me that painters couldn't effectively work outdoors until they had a reliable way to cart around their paints and keep them from drying up (that is, when metal tubes of paint replaced animal bladders). I understand that old paintings may have faded, but didn't understand that different colors fade differently, and that fading might also involve changing hue. So beyond the many individual facts and stories, most of which I will forget, this is a good introduction to art(ist) appreciation.
A good deal of the book describes the author's own experiences traveling to research color. It's not clear when all of them took places, but they cover enough ground that I'm guessing that they took quite some time and that some were not directly for the purpose of this book but were earlier trips inspired by the author's personal interest in the subject. The blue chapter's story of her traveling to Afghanistan...in 2001...for the sake of seeing in person what are, essentially, blue rocks, was about where I decided that she's unhealthily fixated on this subject, but that I could appreciate her obsession. Her references to home experiments with dyes and pigments (who knew how many colors involve urine in the production?) had a similar effect. I grew to imagine her as a journalist handling her assignments while squeezing in side trips to seek out mango-leaf-eating cows or cochineal insects, toting around a bag of color-related notes and paraphernalia, smelling faintly of, well, pee.
If there's a theme to the book, it's the physical work and limitations involved in making art, particularly in different eras. I didn't know anything about challenges like how few natural ways we have to produce green, or that creating a dye isn't the same thing as creating a pigment. It hadn't occurred to me that painters couldn't effectively work outdoors until they had a reliable way to cart around their paints and keep them from drying up (that is, when metal tubes of paint replaced animal bladders). I understand that old paintings may have faded, but didn't understand that different colors fade differently, and that fading might also involve changing hue. So beyond the many individual facts and stories, most of which I will forget, this is a good introduction to art(ist) appreciation.
jo_crescent's review against another edition
5.0
liked it. Interesting combination of history, travelogue, art & fashion trends. Easy to read in bits, as well, which is handy for night time reading
aktroyer's review against another edition
3.0
i give the author credit for what she attempted to do- travel around the world researching the natural origins of the colors in the color spectrum. However, she was really overdramatic in every single description of what she saw or who she talked to, which drove me nuts. I did give it three stars though because it did fill me with lots of highly enjoyable useless information. i feel i'm totally ready to have a lengthy discussion about south american cochineal bugs and their relation to the color red at any time.
thesassybookworm's review against another edition
4.0
This was a really interesting read! Each chapter is dedicated to a color and it's history and uses through the centuries.
mobilisinmobili's review against another edition
4.0
Some really interesting moments in terms of the beauty and history of colour.
A few slightly patronizing moments of Britishness, but enjoyable all round.
A few slightly patronizing moments of Britishness, but enjoyable all round.
blauerbuchling's review against another edition
3.0
Teilweise recht unwissenschaftlich und verbunden mit einigen Spekulationen, aber trotzdem ein netter, angenehmer Einstieg in die (Kultur-)Geschichte von Farben. Die Bibliografie zitiert einige Sekundärliteratur, die weiterführende Texte aufmacht.
groovybouvie's review against another edition
3.0
A very journalistic approach with personal anecdotes filling the pages. I didn't love the writing style (hence the 3) but enjoyed many of the stories and insights into the history of colour. Her writing often delved into forced puns and personal reflections that said a lot about her privilege to be able to traipse around the world chasing colours.