A review by alundeberg
Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay

4.0

This is not just a history of color, but a bustling travelogue of the world; Victoria Finlay is just my type of traveler-- she has a plan but she doesn't. She hears of a place where a color was developed and she goes, and hopefully, just hopefully, she meets the right people and finds what she is looking for. It's all very serendipitous. The book is categorized by colors; beginning with the earth tones (which, oddly enough, come from the earth) and moves on to my favorites of green, blues, and violet. While this is fun global romp searching for the origins of color, it is laced with the nostalgia of understanding of how people before us lived, where creating art was in fact creation: from preparing the piece to be painted to crushing, mixing, blending the paint to understanding how different mediums react to each other. Finlay also reaffirms that it is in the pieces imperfections that make them beautiful, and she explains how many beautiful colors relied on shit to be so.

Color is an interesting read, and Finlay is an irreverent, speculative, and open tour guide through the palette.