Black

Black, favorite color of priests and penitents, artists and ascetics, fashion designers and fascists, has always stood for powerfully opposed ideas: authority and humility and sin and holiness. This book discusses the social history of the color black in Europe. It is suitable for those interested in the history of fashion, art, media, or design.

"Taken together, the earlier volumes on blue (2001), black (2009), green (2013) and red (2017), plus the new book, [Yellow,] represent 'an edifice' that [Michel Pastoureau] has been working to build for half a century: a history of colours in (for the most part) Europe from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the 18th century and beyond. . . . [The books] amount to an ambitious project deserving not merely respect but even a touch of awe. There are very few comparable enterprises."---Kevin Jackson, Literary Review

Auteur

Michel Pastoureau

Texte du rabat

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.

Contenu

INTRODUCTION 11 IN THE BEGINNING WAS BLACK FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE YEAR 1000 19 Mythologies of Darkness 21 From Darkness to Colors 24 From Palette to Lexicon 27 Death and Its Color 30 The Black Bird 36 Black, White, Red 39 IN THE DEVIL'S PALETTE TENTH TO THIRTEENTH CENTURIES 45 The Devil and His Images 47 The Devil and His Colors 51 A Disturbing Bestiary 56 To Dispel the Darkness 60 The Monks' Quarrel: White versus Black 63 A New Color Order: The Coat of Arms 68 Who Was the Black Knight? 72 A FASHIONABLE COLOR FOURTEENTH TO SIXTEENTH CENTURIES 77 The Colors of the Skin 79 The Christianization of Dark Skin 82 Jesus with the Dyer 88 Dyeing in Black 90 The Color's Moral Code 95 The Luxury of Princes 100 The Gray of Hope 106 THE BIRTH OF THE WORLD IN BLACK AND WHITE SIXTEENTH TO EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 113 Ink and Paper 115 Color in Black and White 119 Hachures and Guillochures 122 The Color War 124 The Protestant Dress Code 130 A Very Somber Century 134 The Return of the Devil 136 New Speculations, New Classifications 140 A New Order of Colors 144 ALL THE COLORS OF BLACK EIGHTEENTH TO TWENTY-FIRST CENTURIES 151 The Triumph of Color 153 The Age of Enlightenment 159 The Poetics of Melancholy 165 The Age of Coal and Factories 170 Regarding Images 176 A Modern Color 180 A Dangerous Color? 190 NOTES 196 BIBLIOGRAPHY 207