Is colour just a psychological reaction, or a purely physical sensation, and does it have an effect on our feelings or moods? John Gage examines the phenomenon of colour from a new and extraordinary perspective, convinced that, like language, it is a historically determined fact whose meaning resides in the various contexts in which it is experienced and interpreted. Thus, his erudite research-illustrated with more than one hundred images, thirty-seven of them in colour-cover subjects as diverse as the optical mixtures in a technique such as the mosaic, the medieval symbolism of colours, the syntax of colours and their uses in Latin America at the time of the conquest, the early history of optics and the prism, or the ideas about colour in the work of Goethe and Runge, Blake and Turner or Seurat and Matisse. A text full of ideas, as essential as it is entertaining.

Publisher: Acantilado