White: The History of a Color

Michel Pastoureau

Hardcover | 23.5 x 2.54 x 23.5 cm | 240 pp

Princeton University Press | 2023 | 9780691243498

As a pigment, white is often thought to represent an absence of colour, but it is without doubt an important colour in its own right, just like red, blue, green, or yellow―and, like them, white has its own intriguing history. In this richly illustrated book, Michel Pastoureau, a celebrated authority on the history of colour, presents a fascinating visual, social, and cultural history of the colour 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, White examines the evolving place, perception, and meaning of this deceptively simple but complex hue in art, fashion, literature, religion, science, and everyday life across the millennia. Before the seventeenth century, white’s status as a true colour was never contested. On the contrary, from antiquity until the height of the Middle Ages, white, red and black formed a chromatic triad that played a central role in life and art. Nor has white always been thought of as the opposite of black. Through the Middle Ages, the true opposite of white was red. White also has an especially rich symbolic history, and the colour has often been associated with purity, virginity, innocence, wisdom, peace, beauty, and cleanliness.

With its striking design and compelling text, White is a colourful history of a surprisingly vivid and various colour.