A groundbreaking, award-winning analysis of colour in Western culture, from the ancient Greeks to the late twentieth century, by one of the foremost authors on the subject.

What does the language of colour tell us? Where does one colour begin and another end? Is it a radiant visual stimulus, an intangible function of light, or a material substance to be moulded and arrayed? Colour is fundamental to art, yet so diverse that it has hardly ever been studied in a comprehensive way.

Art historian John Gage considers every conceivable aspect of the subject in this groundbreaking analysis of colour in Western culture, from the ancient Greeks to the late twentieth century. Gage describes the first theories of colour, articulated by Greek philosophers, and subsequent attempts by the Romans and their Renaissance disciples to organise it systematically or endow it with symbolic power. He unfolds its religious significance and its use in heraldry, as well as how Renaissance artists approached colour with the help of alchemists.

He explores the analysis of the spectrum undertaken by Isaac Newton and continued in the nineteenth century by artists such as Georges Seurat, traces the influence of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's colour theory, and considers the extraordinary theories and practices that attempted to unite colour and music or make colour into an entirely abstract language of its own.

A seminal undertaking to suggest answers to many perennial questions about the role of colour in Western art and thought, Colour and Culture throws fresh light on the hidden meanings of many familiar masterpieces.

223 colour illustrations.