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Sto caricando le informazioni... The Story of Black (edizione 2013)di John Harvey
Informazioni sull'operaThe Story of Black di John Harvey
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As a color, black comes in no other shades: it is a single hue with no variation, one half of a dichotomy. But what it symbolizes envelops the entire spectrum of meaning--good and bad. The Story of Black travels back to the biblical and classical eras to explore the ambiguous relationship the world's cultures have had with this sometimes accursed color, examining how black has been used as a tool and a metaphor in a plethora of startling ways. John Harvey delves into the color's problematic association with race, observing how white Europeans exploited the negative associations people had with the color to enslave millions of black Africans. He then looks at the many figurative meanings of black--for instance, the Greek word melancholia, or black bile, which defines our dark moods, and the ancient Egyptians' use of black as the color of death, which led to it becoming the standard hue for funereal garb and the clothing of priests, churches, and cults. Considering the innate austerity and gravity of black, Harvey reveals how it also became the color of choice for the robes of merchants, lawyers, and monarchs before gaining popularity with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century dandies and with Goths and other subcultures today. Finally, he looks at how artists and designers have applied the color to their work, from the earliest cave paintings to Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Rothko. Asking how a single color can at once embody death, evil, and glamour, The Story of Black unearths the secret behind black's continuing power to compel and divide us. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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What followed was a combination of science, semiotics, and most prominently, art history. This is not so much the use of black in all of time and space as the use of black as fashion and paint, the style of black moreso than the story. It's myriad meanings are touched upon, and the chemical processes that underlie how we come to understand it, but most of the value of this book is in the art history.
Want to fall in love with El Greco? Or Rubens? Ever wonder why Tibetan Buddhism has black demons, or how hinduism can be derided as cock worship at times? Those stories are the function of The Story of Black. Similarly, why black is a sign of our current times, at least in conjecture. This is not necessarily the story of how to make things black, only why that might be their shade and hue.
At times depressing, and sometimes fascinating, be prepared to come out of the book with a lot more feelings about artists, and some slight confusion as to the creation of cast iron. Don't expect a story about why black looks like the future, when it might actually just be the past. As an art book, this is excellent. As something to discuss semiotics, this is acceptable. Anything beyond is lost in the horizon of the book, light that simply cannot escape the pull of the stellar blackness. Not inky or sharp, simply all consuming. (