New Book | The Art of Colour

Posted in books by Editor on July 5, 2023

Kelly Grovier, The Art of Colour: The History of Art in 39 Pigments (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023), 256 pages, ISBN: ‎ 978-0300267785, £30 / $38.

As featured on BBC Worldwide, a captivating new history of art told through the storied biographies of colors and pigments

In this refreshing approach to the history of color, Kelly Grovier takes readers on an exciting search for the intriguing and unusual. In Grovier’s telling, a color’s connotations are never fixed but are endlessly evolving. Knowledge of a pigment and its history can unlock meaning in the works that feature it. Grovier employs the term ‘artymology’ to suggest that color is a linguistic device, where pigments stand in for syllables in art’s language. Color is the site of invigorating conflict—a battleground where past and present, influence and originality, and superstition and science merge into meanings that complicate and intensify our appreciation of a given work. How might it change our understanding of a well-known masterpiece like Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night to know that the intense yellow moon in that painting was sculpted from clumps of dehydrated urine from cows that were fed nothing but mango leaves? Or that the cobalt blue pigment in Van Gogh’s sky shares a material bloodline with the glaze of Ming Dynasty porcelain? Consisting of ten chapters, each presenting a biography of a family of colors, this volume mines a rich vein of pigmentation from prehistoric cave painting to art of the present day. The book also includes beautifully designed features exploring important milestones in the history of color theory from the Enlightenment to the twentieth century.

Kelly Grovier is an acclaimed poet, columnist, and feature writer for BBC Culture. He is the author of several books, including A New Way of Seeing: The History of Art in 57 Works.

c o n t e n t s

Introduction: Artymology

1 Red
Red Ochre • Carmine • Rose Madder • Vermillion • Red Lead
Colourful Minds: Isaac Newton’s Opticks (1704)

2 Orange
Orpiment • Saffron • Chrome Orange • Cadmium Orange
Colourful Minds: Tobias Mayer’s The Affinity of Colour Commentary (1775)

3 Yellow
Yellow Ochre • Lead-tin Yellow • Naples Yellow • Indian Yellow • Chrome Yellow • Cadmium Yellow • Arylide Yellow
Colourful Minds: Mary Gartside’s Essay on a New Theory of Colour (1808)

4 Green
Verdigris • Malachite • Emerald Green • Veridian
Colourful Minds: Goethe’s Theory of Colours (1810)

5 Blue
Azurite • Ultramarine • Cobalt Blue • Prussian Blue • Artificial Ultramarines
Colourful Minds: Philipp Otto Runge’s Color Sphere (1810)

6 Purple
Tyrian Purple • Cobalt Violet
Colourful Minds: Michel Eugène Chevreul’s The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours (1839)

7 Black
Charcoal • Bone Black
Colourful Minds: Emily Noyes Vanderpoel’s Color Problems (1902)

8 White
Lead White • Calcite • Kaolin
Colourful Minds: Albert Henry Munsell’s Atlas of the Munsell Color System (1915)

9 Brown
Umber • Van Dyke Brown • Mummia • Excrement
Colourful Minds: Johannes Itten’s Utopia 1921

10 Precious Metals
Gold • Silver