In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Color in European Art and Architecture

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Art History Color in European Art and Architecture
by
Basile Baudez
  • LAST MODIFIED: 19 February 2025
  • DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199920105-0186

Introduction

As a physical and cultural phenomenon, color bridges sciences and humanities like few topics do and the literature on the subject reflects this division. This article presents the history and theory of color in European art, both within the continent and in its interaction with the rest of the world. Color histories destined to a general audience have been recently flourishing and if they do not always engage with art historical questions, they are systematically illustrated by works of art, mostly paintings, generally used as simple illustrations. Following the seminal series published by Michel Pastoureau between 2009 and 2023 (see Specific Colors), the devotion to a single color seems to be a favorite of publishers. As for the place of color in the art historical field, it has long been the case that most of the studies were either histories of reproductive technology and techniques, histories of dyes and pigments and of pictorial and tinctorial practices, or histories of theories of the nature of color, its semantics, and attempts to classify it. This paper will set aside citations that deal with the physics of color beyond summaries such as Byrne and Hilbert 1997 (cited under Anthologies). Philosophical debates on the nature of color will not be addressed if they do not specifically focus on artistic questions or had a durable impact on European art, such as Aristotle or Newton for example. Certain topics have been the object of intense focus as they were transformative in the practice of artists, such as the quarrel around color and disegno in early modern painting, the debates around the polychromy of Greek architecture and sculpture, the effects of the law of simultaneous color contrast on French painting at the end of the nineteenth century, or color theories in modern movements such as De Stijl or within the Bauhaus. More recently there emerged in the literature questions of trade and publicity, and the relationship between color and industrial design. Color stands at the center of both the material and the global turn. It allows to rethink the role of Europeans in the world as the harvest of its materials plays a crucial role in the history of the destruction and exploitation of natural and human resources. Finally, the cultural and symbolic meaning of colors facilitated the development of racist theories that still eat away at our societies.

References

This section comprises general surveys that can serve as a background to more specialized studies devoted to color in art and color theory. Here are indicated a series of manuals, journals, and articles that aim to contextualize the European art historical field in a wider constellation, not only in terms of disciplinary field but also geographies. Two recent bibliographies that are not specifically devoted to art history are indicated afterwards. The reader will then find a series of primary sources, either as anthologies, coming from a wide range of authors of different fields, followed by fundamental theoretical texts by philosophers, artists, or practitioners writing from Greek Antiquity to the twentieth century. Finally, a section is devoted to the complex topic of color nomenclature, one of the most challenging aspects of this field.

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