Description

This book explores light and colour in art and writing. It asks how colours gain meaning through signs and sight. It draws on poems, history and science, too. This book gives facts and includes pictures. It suits readers who like art and its links to other fields.

Its examples range from Homer to Picasso and The Wizard of Oz. It looks at painters such as Giotto and Monet. These also include Van Gogh, Pissarro and Matisse. It looks at Baldessari and Turrell, too. It also covers Malevich, Stella and Kandinsky.

Writers include Nabokov, Joyce and Wilde. Clarke and Byron feature, too. More examples come from Zola and Proust. Others come from Baudelaire, Borges and Rimbaud. Henry James and Goethe add to its range. So do Marco Polo, Schilling and Chanel. The tone is like a chat. The book blends humour with research.

David Scott Kastan teaches at Yale. He writes about literature and visual art. Stephen Farthing is an artist. He belongs to London's Royal Academy of Arts. He is also an emeritus fellow at Oxford's St. Edmund Hall. Their work brings the views of both scholars and artists. This edition forms part of the Savoir-vivre series.