In addition to the cultural history of art, as the title suggests, there is a mix of colour theory, the biology of how humans can recognise colour, as well the chemical make up of substances that make them a certain colour. It’s impressive that such a wide range of information can be contained in a single book, and with such a lightness of touch, but the author’s style is fluid and vivid and the book is so well researched that I found it a joy to read. The World According to Colour: A Cultural History – book review Oddly, a squashed fly triggered art historian James Fox’s fascination with colour and, in this ambitious study, he takes us on an epic journey showing the significance of various colours across the ages Sample of silk dyed with mauve by William Henry Perkin (1860). 17.8 x 5.1cm. Smithsonian National Museum.

Through a series of stories and vignettes, the book then traces these meanings to show how they morphed and multiplied and, ultimately, how they reveal a great deal about the societies that produced them: reflecting and shaping their hopes, fears, prejudices, and preoccupations.This is of course Genesis 1:1, according to the King James version (first published just a few years before Fludd’s own masterwork). This justly celebrated translation is poetic and portentous in all the right ways, but it gets something very wrong: “darkness” is far too elegant a word for the primeval gloom envisioned by its creators. The original Hebrew was khoshekh () —an ugly, guttural noun that had to be coughed out of the throat like phlegm. This darkness is violent, dissonant, feral. A kaleidoscopic exploration that traverses history, literature, art, and science to reveal humans' unique and vibrant relationship with color. I really can’t recommend this book highly enough and would recommend it to any reader who is interested in colour, art, and human history. There is so much richness in this book that it’s impossible not to find a new idea or to see a familiar colour, in an entirely new way.

Animals inhabit very different chromatic worlds too. Most mammals are red-green colour-blind; bulls might be famous for their hatred of red capes, but the colour itself is invisible to them – they are actually enraged by the fabric’s movements. By contrast, most reptiles, amphibians, insects and birds perceive more colours than us. Bees see ultraviolet light, discerning elaborate patterns in flowers that we cannot perceive, while snakes see infrared radiation, detecting the warm bodies of prey from a distance. People generally name only the colours they consider socially or culturally importantGian Lorenzo Bernini, The Rape of Proserpina (1621-2). Carraran marble, h. 255 cm. Galleria Borghese, Rome. Photo: Waldo Miguez. If red is the colour we all possess, then yellow is very much the one for which we yearn, whether it be the sun’s golden rays, the golden spice of saffron, or, indeed, gold itself. Of course, none of these is truly yellow, and it is only when Fox turns to art history that the hue, which was JMW Turner’s favourite, comes properly into focus. Indeed, Turner used more yellow pigments than any artist and it is not surprising to find that others have become associated with specific colours.

Creation myths from all over the world begin in similar fashion. Here is the Nasadiya Sukta, sometimes known as “The Hymn of the Dark Beginning,” from the Hindu Rigveda ( c. 1500 BCE):

Elisa Giardina Papa: Flock – She Preferred the Lineage of Goats and Ducks

The text refers to images, which I mostly haven’t seen as they weren’t included in my advance copy, but they sound well-chosen and will make the published book something special.

Many, many books have been written on colour, with John Gage’s Colour and Culture, a staple of student reading lists since its publication in 1993, a rare treasure among numerous dry treatises. The Red chapter was talking a lot about cave paintings, but it really didn't relate to the color red specifically, and how red has been linked with blood. The next subheading was called "Blood Offerings" and I honestly came here to read about color and not blood. While some of the stories and artists were familiar to me, I was introduced to many new ones; I want to explore the work of Howard Hodgkin and perhaps even the avant-garde Ana Mendieta.

El Anatsui – interview: ‘My inspiration comes from things people have used – there are so many endless delights’

The World According to Colour: A Cultural History by James Fox; Earthrise (1968). Colour photograph (NASA). A meticulously-researched exploration of the kinds of cultural associations that have grown up around particular colours. Art historian James Fox takes seven colours and constructs a series of curious, revealing histories: the “mauve mania” that swept Victorian England influencing art and literature; the dye wars between manufacturers desperate to cash in on their discoveries; how the vivid yellows of a Turner painting attracted a health warning; how white became linked to ideas about purity and fuelled dangerous prejudices around notions of race and identity. Although I thought Fox’s conclusions about what the myriad meanings attached to colours say about humanity were a little too sweeping, his approach often reminded me of Neil MacGregor’s absorbing A History of the World in 100 Objects, Fox’s writing’s similarly accessible and lucid. He’s adept at unearthing and presenting an array of fascinating information. There are weaker sections that stray into exhaustive, laundry-list territory, transparency’s often achieved at the expense of nuance, and the sheer wealth of detail can be overwhelming but I think there’s more than enough compelling, stimulating material here to compensate for any shortcomings. The relationship humans have with color - no matter which one and there are so many (40,000 at last count) that it's apparently getting hard to come up with new names for them - can tell more about a person and our society than even language.