The Secret Lives of Color

by Kassia St. Clair

Hardcover, 2017

Status

Available

Call number

BF789.C7 S64

Publication

Penguin Books (2017), Edition: Later Printing, 320 pages

Description

"The unforgettable, unknown history of colors and the vivid stories behind them in a beautiful multi-colored volume The Secret Lives of Color tells the unusual stories of seventy-five fascinating shades, dyes and hues. 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. In this book, Kassia St. 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. Across fashion and politics, art and war, the secret lives of color tell the vivid story of our culture. "A mind-expanding tour of the world without leaving your paintbox. Every color has a story, and here are some of the most alluring, alarming, and thought-provoking."--Simon Garfield, author of Just My Type"--… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member wyvernfriend
I so wanted more. I found it fascinating to read about colours and the origins and how we ended up with names we have and colours we have and the importance to people and places. It made me think and I loved how on the back of my edition the text is punctuated by the colours in dots. The page edges
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also reflect the colours discussed and the pages generally about a colour is in shades of that colour.
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LibraryThing member annbury
This lovely book examines the history of color, focussing on seventy-five different shades. The segments usually start with a look at how the color was first used by people -- as a shade of paint, as a dye -- and then at how it was obtained. Some of the segments go back to the earliest human art
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(the use of charcoal and hematite in cave paintings), others focus on the use of a particular shade by a particular painter, and others on the provenance of the color. All together, a fascinating book.
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LibraryThing member hadden
I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I wasn't expecting very much, but was surprised by the depth of research in each of the colors shown here. The information comes from art history, of course, but also includes military history (who knew Lord Mountbatten had a camouflage color named after
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him?); archaeology (Neolithic paintings with a description of the color palette used by stone age people) and chemistry (who knew that some of the chemical techniques to make colors were so complex or lengthy to complete?).

Each page has the color placed on the edge, and an anecdotal description and history of each color or shade. Each description is a page and a half or more, but each one did the best thing that an author can do- make the reader want to find out more. The old description of good writing, that it is "for provocation rather than information", is accomplished here, since the reader is provoked to find out more.

Recommended for larger libraries with reference sections; art libraries and collections; general humanities collections, and high school libraries. Not a good book for reading in one sitting, but it is a good travel book or one for reading with frequent interruptions (in short, a good bathroom book). I enjoyed it.
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LibraryThing member kaylaraeintheway
I love histories like this: a focus on a very specific yet unconventional thing. In this case, colors! I learned so many interesting tidbits, and it's fun to see how something like color was affected by history.
LibraryThing member Auntie-Nanuuq
Thorough, comprehensive, assiduous, meticulous, conscientious, painstaking, methodical, rigorous, in-depth, exhaustive, all-embracing, & anal-retentive book I have ever read: and to think when it came out I, as an artist who loves & revels in color, was so excited, that instead of waiting to read a
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Library copy (there was a humongous wait list) I bought one to own.

That was a mistake, but I learned (well no, I let most of it pass me over) more than I ever wanted to know, that I didn't even know was possible to know, about:
White + Seven (7) variations
Yellow + Ten (10) variations
Orange + Six (6) variations
Pink + Seven (7) variations
Red + Seven (7) variations
Purple + Six (6) variations
Blue + Eight (8) variations
Green + Eight (8) variations
Brown + Eight (8) variations
Black + Eight (8) variations

Included is a Preface & six (6) chapters prior to the investigation of the history of each color AND a Glossary, Notes, Bibliography (and suggested other reading), Acknowledgements, & Index all for 320 pages of mind-numbing, sleep inducing reading.

I am an artist; I use color, lots & lots of color; I mistakenly thought this book would further my knowledge of what I already knew: Lead white or red or orange is poisonous; Green is from arsenic & therefore also poisonous & William Morris used it heavily in his clothing & wallpaper; Sepia is squid ink; and cochineal (which we have & talk about at the Garden I docent at), used as natural food coloring, is a Bug!

It took me well over 6-8 months to read this and it hurt my brain. However, if you have a steel-trap for a brain and you want to learn about the composition & history of traditional colors used in art, clothing/fashion, make-up, and/or decor this is the book for you.

I'm thinking of gifting it to my favorite watercolor artist, it would better serve as a go-to reference source, rather than a sit-down "let's read for a bit" book!

It earned a 2nd ★ for the completeness & depth of information
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LibraryThing member JesseTheK
Clearly a reprint of ten years of blog posts. Many fascinating factoids about the linguist, chemical, and social origins of colors – principally those related to textiles.
LibraryThing member maryzee
Interesting and easy read about the history and mystique of many colors through history.
LibraryThing member PDCRead
We take colour for granted these days; where ever you look you have garish clothing and brightly painted items competing for attention. But it was never like that, go back several hundred years ago, and lost people wore grey or brown cloth that had been dyed with the ochres and earth colours. Those
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that had some colour in their lives were the rich; they could afford the purples and reds that adorned their clothes and the rare blues and yellows that graced their artworks.

In this fascinating book, St Clair has uncovered the history behind 75 different colour shades and hues and tell their individual story. We find out where in the world these colours originated from, who made them popular, just how expensive a vivid blue like ultramarine was and the chemistry behind turning ground rock into artist’s paint and dyes for cloth. Modern colours are fairly robust, but it is a reminder just how lethal some colours were. The historical account of colour is enlightening too, as we find out which have come into fashion, why some prefer blondes, which colour was behind a notorious seduction and which have remained popular and those that currently don’t fit the bill.

Not only is it a nicely written and fascinating book, but it is a beautifully produced book too; each colour group is split into sections and the margins on each page are coloured to match the shade being written about. As you read though each page changes subtly in colour and tone. Just rippling through the pages you transcend from white to yellow to the reds, blues greens and end up at the black, it is a nice effect. The dots on the front are embossed making touching the cover a tactile experience. It was worth reading and would make a good companion volume to Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour by Philip Ball and Colour: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay if you already have those.
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LibraryThing member LynnB
An absolutely beautiful book which not only talks about colour, but features each discussed colour as edging of its pages.

The author provides a brief introduction about how we see and perceive colour, then goes on to provide a short vignette on 76 different colours in a few pages each. The
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vignettes may be about how the colour is made, how it was discovered, or about social, cultural or political issues surrounding the colour. A fascinating read!
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LibraryThing member Bodagirl
Short but detailed descriptions of over 75 hues, make this book an easy one to put down and pick back up without losing a thread. The design of the book is very minimalistic, but I would have liked some additional pictures, especially of the art referenced.
LibraryThing member Pferdina
Enjoyed this book very much. Short stories about different colors, usually something interesting and unexpected. Additionally, the book itself is a thing of beauty with its colored pages and dots in the index.
LibraryThing member PattyLee
What a charming, informative, fascinating little book. The shades of color are not all encompassing, but the stories of the colors are full of philosophy, history, psychology, humor. In the interests of full disclosure, I kept Wikipedia on my computer because there were many things she mentioned
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that I wanted more info about or wanted to see a picture of.
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LibraryThing member ValerieAndBooks
This book is about color. But it's much more than that. This volume is both striking in its appearance and how Author Kassia St. Clair approaches the history of each color. I love the cover and how a rainbow is created at the page edges. St. Clair briefly shares something (in a couple pages) about
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each color she chooses to discuss -- it may be sociological, scientific, cultural, political or a combination of those factors. This is the type of book I would pick up and read about a couple colors at a time rather than straight through. So much information is packed in this, though, that at the end of all this I don't remember specifics about each color but was able to take away the fact that color is an integral part of our culture in so many ways.
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LibraryThing member spinsterrevival
This was made up of little informational nuggets about the meaning behind certain colors; and while they were all interesting and fun to hear, they left me wanting more. Basically I’m going to go down some research rabbit holes as I want to dig deeper into many of these stories. Regarding the
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audiobook, it had an extra chapter at the end since it was first published (& it’s not in my ebook version); also I don’t think the author should have read it as it was difficult to get through some of the muddle in her voice as it seemed like some articulation was off.
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LibraryThing member kslade
Great book on substances used to color in art over the ages. Finally know what vermilion really is. Colored pages! Read it!
LibraryThing member woj2000
A light and digestible whistle-stop tour through the histories of colours, hues, and shades. Heavily concerned with fashion, dyes, and the manufacture and economics thereof. Given its inoffensive subject matter and rapid-fire structure, I'd recommend this as a coffee-table or bathroom book. Don't
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be fooled by appearances though - the endnotes are judicious and apt to get you lost down the rabbit-hole of colour history.
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LibraryThing member saschenka
Intriguing and enjoyable look at the history and provenance of 75 colors with special attention to their role in art: it shows how much of art was dependent upon what was available at the time. This book is beautifully designed, a visual work of art itself. Only quibble is it would’ve been nice
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to have a brief end chapter discussing the future of the use of colors in art and/or current debates as follow ups on points raised throughout the book.

Some examples of how color interacts with our world:

Sensationalist literature of 19C kept between yellow covers (yellow journalism) — the Middle Ages forced ostracized groups to wear yellow vs the ‘Yellow Nineties’ as artists adopted it in repudiation of Victorian values.
Orange was the star of Monet’s ‘Impression, Sunrise’ (plus color contrast theory, leading to a new movement. The orange-red minium is the color of illuminated manuscript capitals/pilcrows leading to our word ‘miniature’. New theories on shadows (they weren’t black or grey but actually colored) and complementary color schemes (violet complements yellow) ergo the shade depicted in a painting would be soft violet. 1881 Manet “Fresh air is violet”: This was exciting to read because I have always thought the same thing.
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Awards

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2016

Physical description

320 p.; 8.6 inches

ISBN

0143131141 / 9780143131144
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