Pink The history of a color

Despite its prevalence in nature and incontestable evidence of its use by artists in the fourth century BCE, the color pink existed without a name until the late Middle Ages. As he did with the other volumes in his "History of a Color" series (White, Yellow, Blue, Green, Red, and Black), Pastoureau offers a scientific, cultural, and artistic study, here exploring Western histories of paint compounds, plants, fashion trends, individual artists, and pop culture icons. Full-page, high-quality image reproductions are abundant, with captions offering rich details on ancient Macedonian paintings, early Roman frescoes and mosaics, medieval religious works, rococo fabrics, and ceramics, along with commentary on the much-praised flesh tones in the art of Titian and Rubens and the cultural impact of The Pink Panther and the Barbie doll. Once equated with status and luxury, pink's associations and popularity have changed over time. Pastoureau notes pink's ambivalent status today, highlighting both its negative and positive (often playful) contemporary associations. Color-curious readers might find Kassia St. Clair's The Secret Lives of Color, with short entries on 75 shades, colors, and dyes, more to their liking, but Pastoureau's thoroughly researched, wide-ranging book deserves a spot in all art libraries. VERDICT A profusely illustrated in-depth history of interest to students of art and art history.--Daryl Grabarek

The meaning of an enigmatic shade. Historian Pastoureau's seventh book on the history of colors in European societies presents a lively, informative investigation of the social, lexical, artistic, and symbolic meanings of pink, one of the hues he calls "half colors," which include orange, purple, gray, and brown. Seen in paintings in ancient Macedonia, pink became associated with nudity because of its appearance in Roman depictions of the skin of gods. Even throughout the Middle Ages, pink was not seen in attire, nor in liturgy or heraldry, where various shades of red were prominent. In the 14th century, when Florentine dyers offered diverse pink tones, the color increased in popularity in paintings and textiles, was found in clothing inventories, and became so fashionable throughout Europe that, from 1380 to 1390, a craze for the color swept the French court. Still, it did not carry the association with feminine that was attached to it later, nor did it have a name. Sometimes calledincarnato, referring to flesh tone, after mid-18th-century horticulturalists developed new pale shades of roses, that term was replaced by the French wordrose, meaning "a pretty pink tint." Gradually, over the next hundred years, pink entered the aesthetic and literary lexicon as associated with female beauty, gentleness, and delicate feelings. From the mid-19th to mid-20th century, that association passed from young women to little girls and, with the creation of Barbie in 1959, to their older sisters. Besides tracing the trajectory of the color's popularity, Pastoureau looks at many substances--plants, minerals, insects--used in dyes and paints to produce pink tones, as well as recipes for creating and applying pink pigments. An entertaining, beautifully produced volume. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.