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The story of the color black in art, fashion, and
culture-from the beginning of history to the twenty-first
century Black-favorite color of priests and penitents,
artists and ascetics, fashion designers and fascists-has always
stood for powerfully opposed ideas: authority and humility, sin and
holiness, rebellion and conformity, wealth and poverty, good and
bad. In this beautiful and richly illustrated book, the acclaimed
author of Blue now tells the fascinating social history of
the color black in Europe. In the beginning was black, Michel
Pastoureau tells us. The archetypal color of darkness and death,
black was associated in the early Christian period with hell and
the devil but also with monastic virtue. In the medieval era, black
became the habit of courtiers and a hallmark of royal luxury. Black
took on new meanings for early modern Europeans as they began to
print words and images in black and white, and to absorb Isaac
Newton's announcement that black was no color after all. During the
romantic period, black was melancholy's friend, while in the
twentieth century black (and white) came to dominate art, print,
photography, and film, and was finally restored to the status of a
true color. For Pastoureau, the history of any color must be a
social history first because it is societies that give colors
everything from their changing names to their changing meanings-and
black is exemplary in this regard. In dyes, fabrics, and clothing,
and in painting and other art works, black has always been a
forceful-and ambivalent-shaper of social, symbolic, and ideological
meaning in European societies. With its striking design and
compelling text, Black will delight anyone who is
interested in the history of fashion, art, media, or design.