Black
Black: The History of a Color
by Michel Pastoureau
If there is a villain in Michel Pastoureau’s Black: The History of a Color, it is Isaac Newton.
The scientist, whom Pastoureau does, admittedly, call the greatest of all time, appears three-quarters of the way through this chronological telling of the shade’s evolving symbolism in the worlds of art, fashion, religion, government and finance. In the anonymous portrait – one of several gorgeous selections appearing on likely half the handsome book’s pages – Newton is shrouded in black. He sits in a darkened room, …
