Abstract

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.

Chris Horrocks is Principal Lecturer in Art History at Kingston University. His publications include Marshall McLuhan and Virtuality (2000), Baudrillard and the Millennium (1999), Introducing Foucault (with Zoran Jevtic, 1997), and Tokyo GlamRock (edited, 2002).

“The anthology forms part of a critical yet visionary tradition of interdisciplinary studies on colour. [It] shows that much is to be gained by analyzing colour beyond the symbolic. of a collection…and [by] moving beyond entrenched binaries.”  ·  Journal of Design History