“Color is the fruit of life.” – Guillaume Apollinaire
Author: Kassia St. Clair
The sensory elements of our world, especially color, tell us so much about ourselves, about one another, about culture, and about the natural world. Colors affect our moods and even our value judgements. Kassia St Clair knows this about color – that it is an entire cosmos in and of itself: that it has defined groups of people (positively and negatively), that it has marked wealth and poverty, driven trends, and showcased everything from religious fever to taste. Colors have started and influenced the outcomes of wars, warned of diseases, lead discoveries and conquests, and in some cases, color is one of the few clues we have left about the values and everyday lives of ancient civilizations. Colors tell us about geology and landscape and represent shifting perceptions of the world.
Divided into ten central sections, The Secret Lives of Color focuses on white, yellow, orange, pink, red, purple, blue, green, brown, and black. Under each section, Kassia digs into between five and ten central colors. Each segment is between two to three pages, with a focus on a surprising or unique fact about the color.
Some of these essays, which originally appeared in column form, talk about the making of the color itself, including the often dangerous processes of mixing chemicals together to create beautiful pigments that in some cases killed those who made them. Colors can be made from animals, vegetables, minerals, man-made chemicals (later), and mixtures of everything in between. The agents that go into their concoction, and the resulting outcomes, could be toxic and unstable, could be inexpensive our ruinously dear. The ability of the color to adhere and stay, to work with other colors, often outweighed the danger of making it. The leading section on white – and creating a good white base – focuses on a lot of the poisonous, lead infused mixtures and how makers and artists risked themselves, often unknowingly, for the perfect shade.
Other color essays shift more into the cultural. The famous example is how purple, made from a long and tiring process of extracting the juices of a specific oyster, was a royal color because of its expense and the difficulty in making it. Peasants were often only allowed to wear certain colors, designating their social standing. Thus, color in clothing became an instant indicator of where you ranked in society – showcasing both how much money and how much influence you had.
Image by Alexandr Ivanov from Pixabay
Some essays focus on the fallibility of fashion – with an especially funny segment on how puce became de rigueur for a while. Still other sections go straight to the weird – such as how the color mummy, a brown often used to paint drawing room walls, was actually made from, you guessed it, the desiccated remains of Egyptian mummies.
Some colors were indicative of illness. Some had religious significance (blue) or worldly associations (the scandalous scarlet). Some were just fads, quickly replaced. But all of the 75 colors Kassia chose for this volume burst with life and meaning, leading us to more fully appreciate the importance of the technicolor world we have come to take for granted.
The Secret Lives of Color is fascinating and fun, an easy book to read before bed, with digestible essay portions. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, and how quickly I read through this volume. It has all the best marks of non-fiction. It gives us just enough to arouse our curiosity without overburdening the point, and the author provides a long index of additional colors for the insatiably curious to continue their multi-hued journey.
I want to read more of Kassia’s work. She combined just the right amount of information with just the right mixture of focus to keep me engaged throughout The Secret Lives of Color. I even gifted my father-in-law, who is an artist, this book to enjoy as a part of his beach reading. Highly recommended.
– Frances Carden
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