For anyone who is susceptible to the energetics of color (my hand is up), reading about it can also be intoxicating. Here are a few great books for those who revel in this inexplicably mysterious and lush bennie of life on this planet:
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Written by a journalist who travels the world exploring the original sources for artist palette colors, Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay is a fascinating and readable account of everything from the ochres to the bone blacks (which originally came from burned human bone remains…I know, eaw.) Finlay makes her search an adventure.
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Amy Butler Greenfield comes from a family of dyers. Combining her family background with an expertise in Renaissance Europe, A Perfect Red traces the rich and varied history of the color in Western culture. I have always loved the story of how the red found in Mexico baffled Europeans for years. Animal or vegetable? As hard as the Spanish tried to keep it a secret, the true source for that highly desirous red—the tiny cochineal insect that thrives as a parasite on the nopal cactus—was eventually exposed.
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Blue does not have the ancient pedigree of the reds and yellows. In fact some historians have posited the possibility that ancient people could not decipher the color at all. Blue: The History of a Color is written by historian Michel Pastoureau who also wrote The Devil’s Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric. (What a title—who knew!)
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These two books, The Primary Colors and The Secondary Colors are written by Alexander Theroux. A literary stylist rather than an artist or historian, Theroux has written an extended poetic meditation on color more than a factual and informative account. I love to just pick up either of these two books and open it at random. Every paragraph is an invitation to a revelry of color.
I can’t tell you how long my book list has become but I can say, these are going to go on it.
Long book lists are a good thing. Don’t stop!