What I have tried to do is provide something between a potted history and a character sketch for the 75 shades that have intrigued me the most.The project began with research on something else entirely, checking out 18th Century fashion intel at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, where she came across some mysterious adjective-noun combinations for the colors of things in fashion, which sparked more research, becoming a column on color in British Elle Decoration magazine.
Any of us could name many more, but the odds are we would not be able to expound on each the way Ms. Thankfully, Kassia St Clair trimmed a few off the top, bottom, and middle, settling in at seventy-five. The top number is probably infinity, but it feels nice to have an actual number, however extreme, however arbitrary, to define the edges of what there is of anything in the universe. A computer displays under 17 million colors, of which we can see maybe 10 million, but a conservative estimate of how many colors there actually are puts it at 18 decillion. If you are interested in how many colors we can see or the number of colors that exist, you’re gonna need a bigger palette. Color has played a major role in the development of homo sapiens, giving us more tools for making the best survival decisions. And, while B&W still holds a respected place in the visual arts, particularly in photography, film, and drawing, it is color that holds the broadest appeal, which should not be surprising. The cinematic and TV worlds were both certainly B&W for a long time, before color imposed itself on screens large and small. Monochromatics see only the gray scale from black to white. Many creatures have dichromatic vision, (two kinds of cone receptors), which allows limited color perception. “This passionate and majestic compedium will leave you bathed in the gorgeous optics of light.Consider life in black and white. Across fashion and politics, art and war, the secret lives of color tell the vivid story of our culture. Clair has turned her lifelong obsession with colors and where they come from (whether Van Gogh’s chrome yellow sunflowers or punk’s fluorescent pink) into a unique study of human civilization. From blonde to ginger, the brown that changed the way battles were fought to the white that protected against the plague, Picasso’s blue period to the charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, acid yellow to kelly green, and from scarlet women to imperial purple, these surprising stories run like a bright thread throughout history.
The Secret Lives of Color tells the unusual stories of seventy-five fascinating shades, dyes, and hues. Full of anecdotes and fascinating research, this elegant compendium has all the answers.” -NPR, Best Books of 2017 The unforgettable, unknown history of colors and the vivid stories behind them in a beautiful multi-colored volume.
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