Cultures of Colour: Visual, Material, Textual

✍ Scribed by Chris Horrocks (editor)

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2012
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 196
• Series: Polygons: Cultural Diversities and Intersections; 15
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Colour permeates contemporary visual and material culture and affects our senses beyond the superficial encounter by infiltrating our perceptions and memories and becoming deeply rooted in thought processes that categorise and divide along culturally constructed lines. Colour exists as a cultural as well as psycho-physical phenomenon and acquires a multitude of meanings within differing historical and cultural contexts. The contributors examine how colour becomes imbued with specific symbolic and material meanings that tint our constructions of race, gender, ideal bodies, the relationship of the self to others and of the self to technology and the built environment. By highlighting the relationship of colour across media and material culture, this volume reveals the complex interplay of cultural connotations, discursive practices and socio-psychological dynamics of colour in an international context.

✦ Table of Contents

CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION: BEYOND THE LANGUAGE OF COLOUR
PART I COLOUR AND VISUAL CULTURE
CHAPTER 1 AD REINHARDT: ‘COLOR BLINDS’
CHAPTER 2 THE EYE IS A SPHINCTER, OR WHO’S AFRAID OF THE POSTMODERN MONOCHROME?
CHAPTER 3 COLOUR SOUNDINGS: AFTER THE TONE OF FRANCIS BACON
CHAPTER 4 COLOUR AS A BRIDGE BETWEEN ART AND SCIENCE
PART II COLOUR AND MATERIAL CULTURE
CHAPTER 5 COLOUR IN GARDENS: A QUESTION OF CLASS OR GENDER?
CHAPTER 6 CREATING A MIDDLE GROUND: CRITICAL REMARKS ON THE COLOUR/FORM RELATION
CHAPTER 7 HEIDEGGER’S PIXEL: DIGITAL COLOUR AS ‘STANDING RESERVE’
CHAPTER 8 THE DISILLUSION OF THE IMAGE: CINEMATOGRAPHY, COLOUR, SOUND AND DESIRE
PART III COLOUR, TEXT AND RACE
CHAPTER 9 CHROMATIC AMBIVALENCE: COLOURING THE ALBINO
CHAPTER 10 TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE AND HAITIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY: A PIGMENTOCRATIC APPROACH
CHAPTER 11 ‘LINDA MORENITA’: SKIN COLOUR, BEAUTY AND THE POLITICS OF MESTIZAJE IN MEXICO
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX