Michel Pastoureau is a leading French historian whose work delves deeply into the history of visual symbols, particularly colors and animals. His scholarship explores how these symbols have evolved and the impact they have had on Western thought and culture. Pastoureau approaches his research with remarkable erudition, dissecting the intricate web of meanings embedded within these visual elements. His writing offers readers a fresh perspective on subjects often taken for granted, revealing their profound cultural underpinnings.
The book explores the rich and evolving significance of pink throughout history, revealing its transformation from a masculine hue in the eighteenth century to its modern feminization linked to the Barbie doll. It details the development of pink pigments, the cultural symbolism attached to the color, and its associations with various themes such as softness, pleasure, and sexuality. With captivating illustrations, it offers a comprehensive visual and social history of pink in art, fashion, literature, and everyday life from antiquity to the present.
Tento výkladový slovník je rozsahem i pojetím ojedinělým pokusem představit epochu středověku v celé její šíři a plasticitě. Každé z více než osmi desítek hesel je samostatným esejem.
Presents a fascinating visual, social, and cultural history of the color white in European societies, from antiquity to today. Illustrated throughout with a wealth of captivating images ranging from the ancient world to the twenty-first century
Dass ein bestimmter Geschmack oder ein spezieller Geruch eine ganze Dominokette an Erinnerungen auslösen kann, dass das Gedächtnis eine sinnliche Erfahrung speichert und mit bestimmten Gefühlen verknüpft, ist in der Literatur oft beschrieben worden. Dass die verlorene Zeit jedoch ebenso spontan und scheinbar unwillkürlich mittels Farben und Formen wiedergefunden werden kann, zeigt Michel Pastoureau in diesem schillernd bunten anekdotischen Essay. Er erzählt von blauen Hosen und von Rotkäppchens Haube, von Trikots und Farbfilmen, von schwarzen Katzen und monochromen Menüs, von Mondrian und Vermeer, von Vierfarbkugelschreibern und Rotgrünblindheit. Wie beiläufig verbindet er in seinem kurzweiligen Parcours private Erinnerungen mit soziologischen, historischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen. Nach der Lektüre wird man die bunte Welt mit anderen Augen sehen!
What remains of the colours of our childhood? What are our memories of a blue rabbit, a red dress, a yellow bike – and were they really those colours? What colours do we associate with our student years, our first loves, our adult lives? How does colour leave its mark on memory? In an attempt to answer these and other questions, Michel Pastoureau presents us with a journal about colours that covers half a century. Drawing on personal recollections, he retraces the recent history of colours through an exploration of fashion and clothing, everyday objects and practices, emblems and flags, sport, literature, museums and art. This text – playful, poetic, nostalgic – records the life of both the author and his contemporaries. We live in a world increasingly bursting with colour, in which colour remains a focus for memory, a source of delight and, most of all, an invitation to dream.
Traces the history of yellow around the world, telling the story of the color's evolving place in art, religion, fashion, literature, science, and everyday life, and revealing how its meaning has changed profoundly over millennia and varied among cultures
Die Pracht der Farben ist atemberaubend. Ritter mit kühner Helmzier wirbeln im Kampf, die Kostüme über und über mit Wappen verziert. Pferde bäumen sich auf. Schwerter sausen nieder. Das Wappenbuch des Ordens vom Goldenen Vlies verbindet kraftvolle Dynamik und leuchtende Schönheit zu einem faszinierenden Universum. Der Band bietet erstmals eine hochwertige Reproduktion der gesamten Handschrift, die 1436-1437 in Nordfrankreich geschaffen wurde. Sie enthält 79 ganzseitige Reiterbilder, welche die Ordensritter sowie bedeutende Herrscher und Kirchenfürsten aus ganz Europa darstellen. Hinzu kommen 950 Wappen der Gesandten, die 1435 am Vertrag von Arras mitwirkten. Der renommierte Historiker Michel Pastoureau führt in die Heraldik ein und beschreibt Entstehung und Bedeutung der Handschrift. Überraschende Einsichten in die Modernität mittelalterlicher Wappen verrät sein Gespräch mit Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, das mit fantasievollen Zeichnungen des bekannten Modeschöpfers illustriert ist.
Praise for Michel Pastoureau's Green :[S]umptuously illustrated. . . . These
are books to look at, but they are also books to read. . . . Individual colors
find their being only in relation to each other, and their cultural force
depends on the particular instance of their use. They have no separate life or
essential meaning. They have been made to mean, and in these volumes that
human endeavor has found its historian. - Michael Gorra, New York Review of
Books
Ce livre conduit le lecteur sur des terrains variés : les procès d'animaux, la mythologie des arbres, le bestiaire des Fables, l'histoire du jeu d'échecs, la symbolique des couleurs, l'origine des armoiries, l'iconographie de, Judas, la légende du roi Arthur et celle d'Ivanhoé. Tout au long de ce parcours, Michel Pastoureau souligne avec force combien l'histoire des animaux et des végétaux, des couleurs et des images, des signes et des songes, loin de s'opposer à l'histoire sociale, économique ou politique, en est une composante essentielle. Pour l'historien, l'imaginaire est toujours une réalité. Historien, directeur d'études à l'Ecole pratique des hautes études, spécialiste des couleurs, des images et des symboles, Michel Pastoureau est l'auteur d'une cinquantaine d'ouvrages. En 2010, il a reçu le prix Médicis essai pour son livre Les Couleurs de nos souvenirs (Seuil, "La Librairie du XXIe siècle").
"In this beautiful and richly illustrated book, the acclaimed author of Blue and Black presents a fascinating and revealing history of the color green in European societies from prehistoric times to today. Examining the evolving place of green in art, clothes, literature, religion, science, and everyday life, Michel Pastoureau traces how culture has profoundly changed the perception and meaning of the color over millennia--and how we misread cultural, social, and art history when we assume that colors have always signified what they do today. Filled with entertaining and enlightening anecdotes, Green shows that the color has been ambivalent: a symbol of life, luck, and hope, but also disorder, greed, poison, and the devil. Chemically unstable, green pigments were long difficult to produce and even harder to fix. Not surprisingly, the color has been associated with all that is changeable and fleeting: childhood, love, and money. Only in the Romantic period did green definitively become the color of nature. Pastoureau also explains why the color was connected with the Roman emperor Nero, how it became the color of Islam, why Goethe believed it was the color of the middle class, why some nineteenth-century scholars speculated that the ancient Greeks couldn't see green, and how the color was denigrated by Kandinsky and the Bauhaus. More broadly, Green demonstrates that the history of the color is, to a large degree, one of dramatic reversal: long absent, ignored, or rejected, green today has become a ubiquitous and soothing presence as the symbol of environmental causes and the mission to save the planet. With its striking design and compelling text, Green will delight anyone who is interested in history, culture, art, fashion, media, or design"--Publisher's description
