5 famous events in history. The most important historical events that everyone should know

Black. color history

Thanks

Before taking the form of a book, this version of my black social and cultural history was the subject of several years of seminars I taught at the Practical School of Higher Studies and at the Higher School of Social Sciences. And I would like to thank all my students and listeners for the fruitful exchange of views during our joint work.

I also express my gratitude to all the people in my environment - friends, relatives, colleagues - who helped me with their comments, advice and suggestions, in particular Pierre Bureau, Yvonne Casal, Claude Cupri, Marina Escola, Philippe Fago, Francois Jaxon, Philippe Junot, Laurence Kleiman, Maurice Olender and Laura Pastouro. Thanks also to Claude Henard and her collaborators at Seuil Publishing: Caroline Fuchs, Caroline Chambeau, Karine Benzaquin and Frédéric Mazuy.

And finally, I say a huge and heartfelt thank you to Claudia Rabel, who helped me not for the first time with her advice, subtle criticisms, and strict and efficient proofreading of the text.

Introduction

Color in the mirror of history

If we are asked: "What do the words 'red', 'blue', 'black', 'white' mean?", then in response we, of course, can point to objects of the corresponding colors. But beyond this our ability to explain the meaning of these words does not go.

Auf die Frage: "Was bedeuten die Wörter rot, blau, schwarz, weiss?" können wir freilich gleich auf die Dinge zeigen, die so gefärbt sind. Aber weiter geht unsere Fähigkeit die Bedeutungen dieser Wörter zu erklären nicht.

Ludwig Wittgenstein. Notes on Color / Ludwig Wittgenstein. Bemerkungen über die Farben, I. 68

A few decades ago, at the beginning of the last century, or even in the fifties, the title of our book might have surprised some readers who were not accustomed to consider black. Today, the situation is different: few people will deny that black is a color. Black has regained the status it has held for centuries or even millennia, the status of a color in the fullest sense of the word, and even the pole of power in all color systems. Like its counterpart, white, with which, however, it was by no means always associated, black gradually lost its color status in the period that began at the end of the Middle Ages and lasted until the 17th century: when the printed book and engraving appeared - text and image applied in black paint on white paper - these two colors have taken a special position; and then the Reformation and scientific progress took them beyond the color world. Indeed, when Isaac Newton discovered the color spectrum in 1665-1666, he thereby created a new color order in which there is no longer room for either white or black. This is a real revolution in the chromatic division of colors.

For more than three centuries, black and white have been perceived and used as “non-colors”, in other words, they together have made up their own special world, opposite to the world of color: “black and white” on the one hand, “color” on the other. In Europe, this opposition has been natural for a dozen generations, and although today it is practically out of use, we still do not find it absurd. But our perception has changed. It all started with the artists of the 1910s, who gradually returned to the full chromatic status of black and white, which they had until the late Middle Ages. Scientists followed the example of artists; only physicists for a long time refused to recognize the status of color as black. Finally, the new views have spread to the general public, so that now we no longer have reason to contrast the world of color with black and white in social codes and in everyday life. Only in certain areas, such as photography, cinema, the press and book publishing, does this opposition still make sense.

Thus, the title of our book is not a mistake or a deliberate provocation. And not a reference to the famous exhibition organized in Paris at the end of 1946 by the Mag Gallery, an exhibition that had the audacity to say: "Black is also a color." This sensational statement was supposed not only to attract the attention of the public and the press, but also to express a point of view that did not coincide with what was then taught in art schools or written in treatises on painting. Perhaps, four and a half centuries late, the exhibitors wanted to enter into a debate with Leonardo da Vinci, the first artist who, at the end of the 15th century, said that black is, in fact, not a color.

“Black is a color”: today such a statement is perceived as obvious, even as a banality; now it would be a provocation to claim the opposite. However, the aim of our study lies in a different plane. Its title refers not to the exhibition of 1946, not to the saying of the great Leonardo, but only to the title of our previous book: “Blue. The history of color”, published in 2000 by the same publishing house. "Blue" met with a favorable reception both in the scientific community and the general public, and I had the idea to write a similar book dedicated to black. This does not mean that I conceived a whole series of books in which each volume would be devoted to the history of one of the six "major" (white, red, black, green, yellow, blue), and then one of the five "minor" (gray , brown, purple, pink, orange) colors in Western European culture. It would be an empty business to create parallel monographs: after all, any color does not exist on its own, it acquires meaning, "functions" and full power in all aspects - social, artistic, symbolic - only in association with or in opposition to one or more other colors. For the same reason, it cannot be considered in isolation. To speak of black, as will become clear from the following pages, is - inevitably - to speak of white, red, brown, purple, and even blue. That is why the reader will sometimes meet here what is already familiar to him from the book about this last color. I hope they will forgive me for this: after all, I could not do otherwise. For a long time, blue, a rare and unloved color, was considered a "substitute" or a special type of black in Western Europe. So, the stories of these two colors are practically inseparable. If, as my publisher hopes, the first two books are followed by a third (about the color red? about green?), it will no doubt be built around the same issues and based on the same documentary material.

Such studies, which have only the external (and only external) signs of a monograph, should become bricks in the building that I have been dreaming of building for four decades now: the history of color in Western European societies, from ancient Rome to the 18th century. Even if, as we will see on the following pages, I will of necessity look into more distant and closer epochs, my research will unfold precisely within this (already rather wide) chronological framework. It will also be limited to societies in Western Europe, because, in my opinion, the problems of color are, first of all, the problems of society. And I, as a historian, do not have sufficient erudition to talk about the entire planet, and I have no desire to rewrite or paraphrase the work of scientists dealing with non-European cultures from someone else's words. In order not to talk nonsense, so as not to steal from my colleagues, I limit myself to the material that is familiar to me and which for a quarter of a century was the topic of my seminar courses at the Practical School of Higher Studies and at the Higher School of Social Sciences.

Trying to create a history of color, even in a single Europe, is not an easy task. Or rather, an incredibly difficult task, which until recently neither historians, nor archaeologists, nor specialists in the history of art (including painting!) dared to undertake. They can be understood: on this path they would encounter many difficulties. These difficulties are worth mentioning in the preface, because they are an important part of the plot of our book and will help us understand how a disproportion has arisen between the amount of our knowledge and what we do not know. Here, more than anywhere else, the line between history and historiography is blurred. So let's forget about the history of black for now and briefly talk about some of these difficulties. They are of three types.

Blue stocking

This is the color of the form. Forms of a schoolboy and a border guard, train conductor, stewardess, and many others. "Who is knocking at my door, with a thick shoulder bag, with the number "5" on a copper plaque, in a blue uniform cap"? This is the color of business suits, strict but win-win - black is too gloomy, but blue is just right. This is the embodiment of practicality - blue jeans and work overalls. Blue, so familiar, so calm, so casual. But...

What color is the magic bird that the heroes of the famous fairy tale are looking for? What color are the roses that the heroine of one of Kipling's poems asks for?

I am scarlet, white roses in a bouquet
I folded it for my beloved, but there is no joy ...
Love, tell me how to please you?
"I want blue roses."

The hero is ready to search the whole world, but...

Returning home in a frosty winter,
Foolish love I did not find alive.
With the last breath, at the hands of death
I asked for blue roses, my friend.*

*Translated by Valery Lukkarev

They are blue, these roses, the symbol of an unattainable dream. And the bird of happiness is also blue. “Just as we willingly pursue a pleasant object that eludes us, we look at the blue with the same willingness, not because it rushes at us, but because it draws us along with it,” wrote Goethe. "Blue color, heavenly color", the color of love - but love is divine, ideal. Colors of clothes of ancient Madonnas. Mysterious, but at the same time belonging to everyone and everyone. Blue color, in fact, is a light shade of blue, but it deserves a separate discussion, and today we’ll talk about blue.

He will always help out, in any situation - in rainy autumn, you can protect yourself from dirty splashes with a dark blue jacket; and in the summer, on the deck of a liner, play as a flirty sailor - what can be so bright and restrained at the same time as a "marine" combination of white and blue? And the most diverse shades of blue are no less than the feathers in the tail of that same blue bird ...

But what is modernity to him, this beautiful color? And if we consider that natural blue dyes are rare, then the blue color in clothes was highly valued.
The heroine of the Karelian-Finnish epic "Kalevala" dresses up in blue:

And found under the motley cover
Six golden belts
Blue seven beautiful dresses.
Dressing richly,
Choose what's best:
And gold pendants
And a silver kokoshnik
Blue chose a forehead,
Red ribbon on the braid.

From the pages of medieval manuscripts, gentlemen and ladies in dark blue, bright blue, light blue look at us ...

In the middle of the 14th century, the English king Edward III founded the order of chivalry, the Order of the Garter (by the way, the garter, which, according to legend, was the reason for the creation of the order, was blue), and the mantles of the knights were blue. Nowadays they are made of dark blue velvet. Remember the relatively recent film The Queen starring actress Helen Mirren? In the very first shots, the queen poses for the artist in a luxurious dark blue robe - this is the mantle of a member of the Order of the Garter. And the garter itself, the oldest symbol of the order, which men wear on their left leg under the knee, and ladies on their left arm above the elbow, is made of dark blue velvet. Well, blue (including light blue) is a noble color, the color of power... Here is Her Majesty, Elizabeth II, in the full dress of a member of the famous order.

There was, however, another meaning of this color. At first, in the Middle Ages, blue was considered the color of fidelity in love, and then ... turned into the color of infidelity.

Clothes blue will not convince
As well as the motto, strong in love;
But who is devoted to the soul and keeps
Honor the lady of the heart from vicious blasphemy, ...
Not in blue, though he cherishes love, -
The unfaithful, who sins all,
Hides sin with clothes on purpose,
Dress in blue...

The ladies of the 16th century were relatively indifferent to blue, black and shades of red were much more popular, but in the 17th century it began to slowly return (though, frankly, light blue, that is, blue, was loved much more).

In the 18th century, blue did not become the most favorite color, but it was quite loved by gentlemen (blue velvet camisoles, silk waistcoats) and ladies - dresses, clothes for the home, decoration ...

But blue will really reign in the next century, XIX.

Goldfinches in blue walked along the city streets and pages of novels - they left all the other somewhat juicy colors to the ladies, but to lose this too ... Thank you! Have a conscience! "A blue handkerchief with white polka dots peeked out of the inside pocket of his coat, and the coat itself was open, thus giving everyone the opportunity to admire the blue and white striped cashmere vest and white muslin tie with black polka dots"; "He really looked like a gentleman now, and rather smart at that: a blue tailcoat with gold buttons"; "He was dressed in a blue single-breasted frock coat with a long waist and a blue waistcoat with dark stripes an inch wide." "A bright blue flannel suit fitted him from head to toe." “He was dressed with a purely English eccentricity: he had on a blue tailcoat with gold buttons and a high pique collar, which were worn in 1811, a white Casimir waistcoat and white nanke knickers” - well, isn’t he handsome? "Blue velvet uniforms", "blue velvet pants decorated with colorful stripes and silver buttons", "cap of fine blue cloth", "puffed blue trousers", "long-brimmed Siberian coat of fine blue cloth, with small gatherings at the back" - albeit devoid of the bright colors of the past centuries, men's fashion was still quite spectacular, and in no small measure this is the merit of the blue color. "In addition to the carrick, a wide blue cloak, lined with black velvet, and often crimson, was also in fashion at that time, called" Almaviva "after the name of a famous character in the play by Beaumarchais."

Ladies also loved blue, especially when it came to suits that borrowed elements of men's fashion - say, for riding. Or reminiscent of the military ("and I love the military!") uniforms. “In an Amazon of thick blue cloth, with a long train thrown over her left arm, she seemed taller; a corsage in the form of a waistcoat with small round peplums, like leather, hugged her shoulders, hips and chest. There were linen cuffs on the sleeves, because under the linen collar protruded the piping of a blue foulard tie. The man's top hat sat deftly on his knotted hair, and the gas scarf thrown over it, pierced by the golden dust of the sun, seemed like a bluish cloud.

"Is it really a new dress? She took it off the chest of drawers, and it turned out to be a wonderful riding suit, made of the finest dark blue fabric trimmed with silver braid. There was also a hat, also dark blue, decorated with a white ostrich feather." "The boy thought she was mummers. She was wearing a lovely skirt of blue fai with wide frills, and over it - something like a Guards uniform of soft gray silk. The skirts of the uniform on a blue satin lining, a darker shade than the skirt, were elegant the wide cuffs on the sleeves and the lapels of the bodice were trimmed with the same satin. time is lovely."

However, not only Amazons were blue, by no means - dresses and outerwear for walking, home dresses ... "Eileen in a suit of blue silk with a velvet cape of the same color and intricate trim of folds and ruffles was a great success. Blue velvet current with high-crowned, embellished with a dark red artificial orchid, gave it a somewhat unusual and perky look."

And what names were not there for various shades! "Just blue" is so boring... But "Bleuraimonde" or "Lavalier", in honor of Louis XVI's mistress, is another matter.

A fashion magazine of 1834 described "a beautiful outfit for a walk, simple and noble - a warm bonnet on wadding, made of blue damask fabric, cut at the side and tied with satin ribbons; a dark yellow velvet hat; shoes fastened with buttons and a sable muff."

At the same time, blue is increasingly becoming a "shaped" color. Blue cloth tunics and light blue caps of high school students, various uniforms; at the imperial court, colors were strictly regulated, and, for example, the ceremonial dresses of the tutors of the grand duchesses had to be made of blue velvet, and those of their ladies-in-waiting - light blue.

But blue will not give up so easily, and will stubbornly resist - it is suitable not only for uniforms! Back in the middle of the 18th century, the term "blue stocking" arose in England, meaning a woman who valued her mind and creativity much more than her family or her own appearance (note that the man was the first to get this nickname!). So what? This is not a reason to consider blue boring.

The couturier of the early 20th century, Mariano Fortuny, the son of a famous artist, created not only dresses, but also fabrics - his works were so beautiful that they inspired the writer Marcel Proust, who described them more than once in his novels: "That evening, Albertina put on a dress from Fortuny, and it seemed to me a seductive shadow of an invisible Venice, full of Arabic ornamentation, like Venice, like Venetian palaces hiding like sultanas behind stone carvings, like bindings of books from the Ambrosian library, like columns from which birds, symbolizing either death or death, life, reflected in the brilliance of a deep blue fabric, which, the deeper my gaze went into it, the more clearly it turned from deep blue into molten gold, just as when a gondola approaches, the azure of the Canale Grande turns into flaming metal.

Shortly before the First World War, Europe returned to the bright colors that the fashion of the turn of the century supplanted, and bright blue, so immodest in contrast to its dark blue counterparts, solemnly entered the stage - both figuratively and literally - stage costumes famous "Russian Seasons", costume balls... The famous artist Lev Bakst, who created magnificent costumes not only for ballerinas, but also for "ordinary" (however, still "unusual" - in his extravagant outfits!) women, loved the blue.

"Exceptional in its splendor and originality, the costume of velvet and silk pur Bakst of Mrs. El. Pavel. Olive from combinations of black and blue velvet, trimmed with the largest sapphires and extraordinary emeralds, green silk, painted with silver ornaments. All cobalt-colored blue hair, trimmed with luxuriant ostrich feathers in green, purple and blue." Impressive, right? This is an oriental style masquerade ball costume.

Well, soon the masquerade will end, and the "real, non-calendar XX century" will come into its own. Blue will have a hard time in it. No, no, there will be a lot of it, but it will finally be fixed as the color of business, practical, non-staining, respectable, conservative. Solid. And even if it’s festive, it’s still restrained. It will be combined with different colors, trying to achieve brightness with red, cheerfulness with yellow, elegance with beige ...

And only sometimes we will remember the blue bird and blue roses.

Once the fabulous ideal nanny Mary Poppins went for a walk: "Today she was wearing a blue coat with silver buttons and a matching blue hat, and in those days when she was dressed like that, she was very easily offended." Well, walk in blue and don't be offended! Just be like Mary, "Lady Perfect".

O.BULANOVA

Our whole life is a wide variety of colors and shades. Color has taken an important place in our culture, it began to be attributed to mystical and divine properties. Color has acquired great importance in symbolism: heraldic, religious, etc.

However, it was wrong to think that all colors were always in the same position. Michel Pasturo in his book “Blue. The history of color” drew attention to the fact that the blue color began to be present in human life by no means from the very beginning of its inception, and the tradition of its use in public, artistic and religious life has developed relatively recently.

So, on the first wall images of the Late Paleolithic era, this color is absent. We see all sorts of shades of red and yellow, black - more or less bright and saturated, but no blue at all, green - too, and very little white.

A few millennia later, in the Neolithic era, when people began to lead a sedentary life and mastered the technique of staining objects, they began to use red and yellow paint, but there was still no blue.

Although this color exists in nature, man has spent a lot of time and labor to learn how to reproduce it, make it for his needs and use it freely.

Perhaps for this reason, in the Western cultural tradition, blue remained in the background for so long, practically did not play any role either in public life, or in religious rites, or in artistic creation.

Compared to red, white and black, the three “basic” colors of all ancient societies, the symbolism of blue was too poor to contain an important meaning or serve to convey any important concepts, evoke deep feelings or make a strong impression.

The secondary role of blue in the life of the ancients and the fact that in many languages of that time it is difficult to find a word corresponding to this color forced many scientists of the 19th century. doubt that the ancients saw blue, or at least saw it as we see it.

Now such doubts have become an anachronism. However, the surprisingly small social and symbolic significance that was attached to blue in European societies over the long millennia, from the Neolithic to the middle of the Middle Ages, is an irrefutable historical fact, and it needs to be explained.

Based on the fact that blue tones are relatively rare in the fine arts of antiquity, and most importantly, on the vocabulary of the ancient Greek and Latin languages, philologists of the 19th century. suggested that the Greeks, and after them the Romans, did not distinguish blue at all.

Indeed, in both Greek and Latin it is difficult to find an exact and widespread name for blue, while for white, red and black there are not one but several words.

In Greek, whose color lexicon has been formed over several centuries, two words are most often used to define blue: “glaukos” and “kyaneos”. The latter seems to have come from the name of some mineral or metal; this word does not have a Greek root, and scientists have long failed to clarify its meaning.

In the Homeric era, the word “kyaneos” denoted both the blue color of the eyes and the black color of mourning clothes, but never the blue of the sky or the sea. However, of the 60 adjectives that are used to describe the natural elements and landscape in the Iliad and Odyssey, only three are definitions of color; but there are a lot of epithets relating to light, on the contrary. In the classical era, the word “kyaneos” denoted a dark color, and not only dark blue, but also purple, black, brown. In fact, this word conveys not so much a color shade as the impression it makes.

But the word “glaukos”, which existed back in the archaic era, is used quite often by Homer and means either green, or gray, or blue, and sometimes even yellow or brown. It conveys not a strictly defined color, but rather its fading or weak saturation: therefore, the color of water, and the color of the eyes, as well as leaves or honey, were characterized in this way.

And vice versa, to indicate the color of objects, plants and minerals that, it would seem, cannot but be blue, Greek authors use the names of completely different colors. For example, iris, periwinkle and cornflower can be called red (erytros), green (prasos) or black (melas).

When describing the sea and the sky, a variety of colors are mentioned, but not blue. That is why in the late XIX - early XX centuries. Scientists were wondering if the ancient Greeks saw blue, or at least saw it the way we do?

Some answered this question in the negative, putting forward theories about the evolution of color perception: in their opinion, people belonging to societies that are technically and intellectually developed are much better able to distinguish colors and give them accurate names than those who belonged to “primitive” or ancient societies. .

These theories, which immediately after their appearance caused a fierce controversy, seem to many to be incorrect. Not only do their authors rely on the very vague and dangerous principle of ethnocentricity (on the basis of what criteria can this or that society be called “developed” and who has the right to give such definitions?), they also confuse vision (a biological phenomenon) with perception (a cultural phenomenon). ).

In addition, they do not take into account that in any era, in any society, in the mind of a person there is a gap, and sometimes a considerable one, between the real color, the perceived color and how this color is called.

If there is no definition of blue in the color vocabulary of the ancient Greeks or it is very approximate, it is necessary first of all to study this phenomenon within the framework of the formation and functioning of the vocabulary, then - within the ideological framework of the societies that use this vocabulary, and not look here for a connection with the peculiarities of the neurobiology of the members of these societies : the visual apparatus of the ancient Greeks is absolutely identical to the visual apparatus of modern Europeans.

The difficulty in determining the color blue is found in classical, and then in medieval Latin. Take at least the most common - "caeruleus": based on the etymology of the word (cera - wax), it denotes the color of wax, i.e. something between white, brown and yellow, then it begins to be applied to some shades of green or black, and only much later - to the blue color scheme.

Such inaccuracy and inconsistency of vocabulary when it comes to blue reflects the weak interest in this color of Roman authors, and then the authors of the early Middle Ages.

That is why two new words for the color blue easily took root in medieval Latin: one came from Germanic languages (blavus), the other from Arabic (azureus). These words will subsequently supplant all the others and will finally be fixed in the Romance languages.

If, contrary to the opinion of some scientists of the 19th century, the Romans still knew how to distinguish blue, then they treated it with indifference at best, and at worst with hostility. It is understandable: blue for them is mainly the color of barbarians, Celts and Germans, who painted their bodies with blue paint to intimidate enemies.

Ovid says that the aging Germans, hiding their gray hair, tint their hair with woad juice. And Pliny claims that the wives of the Britons paint their bodies dark blue with the same woad before ritual orgies; from which he concludes that blue is a color to be feared or avoided.

In Rome, blue clothes were not liked, they testified to eccentricity or symbolized mourning. In addition, this color, the light shade of which seemed sharp and unpleasant, and the dark one - frightening, was often associated with death and the afterlife.

Blue eyes were considered almost a physical handicap. In a woman, they testified to a tendency to vice; the blue-eyed man was reputed to be effeminate, similar to a barbarian and simply ridiculous. And, of course, in the theater this feature of appearance was often used to create comic characters.

Terentius, for example, rewards several of his heroes with blue eyes and at the same time - either curly red hair, or enormous growth, or obesity - both of which were considered a flaw in republican Rome. Here is how Terentius describes a funny character in his comedy “Mother-in-Law”: “A fat big man with curly red hair, blue eyes and a face as pale as a dead man.”

Starting from the Carolingian era, and maybe even a little earlier (since the 7th century, when the Church introduced some kind of luxury into its everyday life), gold and bright colors began to be used in fabrics for church decoration and vestments of priests. White becomes the color of purity. There is still no mention of blue.

At the beginning of the II millennium, treatises on the religious symbolism of color appeared. None of them not only does not consider, but does not even mention the color blue. It was as if he didn't exist at all. And only in the last years of the XII century. the color blue began to be mentioned.

A deeper study of the issue led to the identification of another pattern. At the beginning, any of the languages contained words that defined the tones of dark and white. Then came red, associated with blood and wine, then yellow and green. After a long period, the formation of the main color scheme ended with the appearance of blue.

The only ancient culture that distinguished blue is the Egyptian. The Egyptians even had blue paint.

In fact, in the natural environment, blue is a rarity. Modern man is sure that the skies are blue. But is it? According to the works of the German philologist Lazarus Geiger and scriptures, heaven can be seen differently.

Guy Deutscher, author of Through the Mirror of Language, conducted an experiment with his daughter. Once he asked her what color the sky was. At first, in the girl's mind, the sky was colorless. Then - white. And only when she got older did she realize that the sky was blue. The understanding of blue completed the girl's color perception chain.

In this regard, another question arises: can a person distinguish colors that are not yet defined by specific concepts? To clarify this issue, the scientist Julie Davidoff made a trip to Namibia. He worked with the local Himba tribe, who have no understanding of the color blue. Also, its representatives do not distinguish blue from green.

For the experiment, the members of the tribe were asked to consider a circle that had 11 green squares and one blue one. The result - no one could find blue.

But in the Himba language there are many words for describing shades of green, which cannot be said about European languages. When examining a circle with green squares with one slightly different in hue, the subjects instantly found it.

So, what can be the conclusion? Defining colors requires words and a way to identify them, otherwise it becomes difficult to see the differences despite their physical perception with our eyes. Until the moment when the blue color began to be perceived by everyone as the norm, humanity saw it, but did not understand what it was seeing.

The world around us is filled with a variety of colors, some of which are still invisible to us. And only the constant development of our abilities allows people to discover new color shades over time.

Each word has its own history, which is called etymology. Etymological analysis clarifies from which language this or that name came, what is its meaning, what spelling it had, how it changed over the centuries. Words with history can reflect any area: science, social area, life. Today we will talk about the appearance of color names.

Colors surround us everywhere: whether it's the blue of a clear sky or the black color of a car. Words that define a particular color shade have long come into use. Red, white, blue, green, orange, purple - words that are heard. Everyone knows what these words mean, but few can say that they are familiar with their origin.

White color.

White color is recognized as the most ancient. The word for it has the Indo-European root "bra" or "bre" meaning "shine, shine, shine." And, indeed, white is often associated with the concept of "light". For many peoples, snow-white shades symbolize light, purity, innocence.

Black color.

Black color, oddly enough, is associated with the sea. This word comes from the old Russian Pont, the Pontic Sea. The Pontic Sea is the ancient name of the Black Sea. So, our ancestors determined the color by the appearance of the body of water, which often seemed dark, gloomy. By the way, the word "black" is also associated with the ancient Iranian "dark".

Red color.

The word "red" is common Slavic in origin. It is formed from the word "beauty" and was used at first as "good, beautiful." It was only after the 16th century that "red" began to symbolize the brightest color in the color spectrum. Red has many shades.

Crimson color.

Crimson color or crimson is associated with the Old Russian "bagar", meaning "red paint, red color". There are 3 versions regarding the history of the word "crimson". One version suggests that this word has the prefix "ba" and the root of "burn", that is, the red color is associated with the flame. The second hypothesis connects the word "bugar" with the ancient word "bagno", which means "mud, swamp". Do not be surprised. The water in the swampy area is dirty red, rusty, so ancient people associated the red color with the swamp. The third assumption is based on the borrowing of the word "bugar" from the eastern part of the Mediterranean. From there they brought a red dye, which gave the name to the crimson color.

Red color.

So our ancestors called the color red. "Red" and "scarlet" have a common root with the verb "worms", meaning "to paint red." In turn, "wormy" is based on the word "worm". The fact is that earlier red paint was obtained from a special kind of worms.

Scarlet color.

The word "scarlet" is of Turkic origin. It meant bright red, light pink color. Some linguists associate "scarlet" with the Arabic word "alaw" - "flame", as well as with the Georgian "ali".

Pink color.

The word "pink" has Polish-Ukrainian roots ("rozhevy", "roz†owy"). It came from the name of the corresponding flower "rose".

Green color.

"Green" is associated with the ancient "zel" ("green"). In the Old Russian language, the noun “zel” functioned in the meaning of “greens, grass, young winter”. The same root is in the familiar words "cereal, potion, ash, gold, yellow."

Yellow.

As already mentioned, the word "yellow" has a common root with the words "green", "gold", "ash". No one would have guessed that gold, green and yellow colors are “relatives”.

Orange color.

The word "orange" came to us from the French language. The suffix -ev- was added to the borrowed "orange" on the Russian platform. "Orange" in translation - orange, that is, orange color - "color of orange."

Blue.

The origin of the word "blue" is rather vague. Blue color is considered to be derived from the word "dove". The color of these birds picked up the exact name - "blue". It turns out that before the blue color was positioned as a gray, and not light blue. They clarified the shade of blue only by the 18th century, before that no one could say for sure what it was.

Blue color.

"Blue" is related to the word "shine", so the original meaning is "sparkling, shining". Researchers met the word "blue" in the meaning of "black", "dark". Remember the expression "blue-black"? The blue color acquired its modern meaning under the influence of the sea sparkling under the rays of the sun and the color of the sky with the sun shining on it.

Purple.

The history of the word "purple" has a long history. It came to us in the 18th century from the Polish language (fioletowy). The word "purple" came to Poland from the German (violet). The German version migrated from the French language, and the French "violet" goes back to the Latin word "viola", which means "violet, violet."

This is how the names of the colors appeared. All of them arose on the basis of objects and phenomena that gravitate towards these colors. So, white color is associated with brilliance and light, "black" - with the dark sea, "red" - with beauty, green and yellow colors - with grass, greenery, "orange" - with the color of orange, blue shades - with the color of doves, "blue" is associated with radiance, purple - with the color of violet.

Great story in blue

2017-12-09 16:01:06

“The deeper the blue color, the stronger it calls a person to infinity, awakens in him a desire for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural. Blue is a typically celestial color." time to talk about the favorite color of Wassily Kandinsky, which has its own, completely unique history in the art world.

invisible blue.

Last time we touched on the fact that the blue color in the art of the past existed in a very mysterious way. It was either ignored or used in the wrong place. Blue was synonymous with black, just as yellow was synonymous with white. In Greek and Latin, it is almost impossible to find a name for this color. while for the triad white-red-black there are several designations. To describe apparently blue things (plants, minerals), Greek authors use the names of other colors. It seems that they either saw other colors instead of blue, or deliberately ignored it. Of course, neither is true. The ancient Greeks saw the world around them identically to the Europeans of the 20th century, no ethnic differences changed their visual qualities so much, and the problem of blue was not personal. Here we are talking about cultural, social, and ideological differences that prevent ancient people from perceiving the blue color on their own.

First appearance.

Egyptian blue was invented back in the 3rd millennium BC, it was made from sand and copper, ground into powder. In ancient Rome, the blue color was openly disliked, it was associated with black, that is, with mourning, death, and sometimes ugliness. For this reason, wearing blue was something egregious. Blue eyes were a subject of disrespect, a physical handicap. Evidence of depravity in women and effeminacy in men. In the theater, blue eyes were often used to create comic characters. In the era of the early Middle Ages, the blue color categorically could not be included in the system of liturgical colors. The system developed much earlier than the perception of blue as a separate color, and the stereotypes that had taken root by that time made the rehabilitation of blue impossible. The church did not give the slightest, even the tiniest place for this color. The Catholic liturgy has always been built on the notorious three colors (guess which ones), however, on weekdays they were allowed to be diluted with green. It turns out that even the green color had more rights. Despite the fact that in nature both colors prevail and are often combined together.

"Golden Age" of blue.

At the beginning of the second millennium, and especially since the XII century, blue in Western European culture ceases to be a secondary and rarely used color, as it was in ancient Rome and in the early Middle Ages. The attitude towards it changes to the exact opposite: blue becomes a fashionable, aristocratic color and even, according to some authors, the most beautiful of colors. Over several decades, its economic value has increased many times over, it is increasingly being used in clothing, and it is taking an increasing place in artistic creativity. Such an unexpected and striking change indicates that the hierarchy of colors that has occupied a place in human perception systems for so many years has been completely reorganized.

Under a wave of inspiration, an immense number of interpretations of blue were invented. Blue symbolizes truth, divine power, pure reason, holiness. The iconography distributes the shades of blue behind the individual New Testament characters. In the first decades of the 13th century, inspired representatives of power begin to dress in azure colors. Think back to the recent mistreatment of blue two or three generations ago. And now the great king of France, Saint Louis, is becoming the first king to wear blue robes. Starting from the afterlife, pernicious and displaced color, blue has grown to the main symbol of divinity.

financial growth.

In the Renaissance, a name appeared for the most valuable pigment at that time - lapis lazuli. Ultramarine paint was made from the most expensive mineral at the time, lapis lazuli, which sold for five times its weight. Since the 6th century, it was delivered to Europe only from Afghanistan, where it was mined and processed. Making the Great Silk Road and getting to the European market, ultramarine paint became a product of the luxury segment. Lapis lazuli, because of its exceptional rarity, was used sparingly, and was often reserved for wealthy patrons, and the most prosperous artists could buy it.

Blue in the era of modernity and our days.

For romantics, especially German ones, blue, like purple, has an extremely powerful positive symbolism. This is the color of prose writers and poets in love with the unknown. "The color of the mysterious soul of the world" - this is how romantics sing of blue, admiring all the variety of its shades. All the advantages of blue are revealed to the fullest already at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century. Blue is considered the most beautiful shade of blue. Romanticism endows blue with a kind of religious meaning. At the time of writing "Young Werther", where Goethe dresses his hero in a blue tailcoat, blue was the most fashionable in Germany in the 1770s. The resounding success of the book further reinforces this fashion. So blue became widespread throughout Europe.

Pablo Picasso turned to blue and created the "blue period" when melancholy, depression, and grief were the driving force behind his work. Blue can convey apathy as well as calmness, a sense of depth as well as a sense of hopelessness at the same time.

Despite the melancholy color blue, as it is imprinted in modern culture, it also retains associations with closeness to truth, cosmogony, mysticism, creates an impression of spirituality and remains a favorite color for a huge number of authors.

Portal for the student. Self-training

White color.

Black color.

Red color.

Crimson color.

Red color.

Scarlet color.

Pink color.

Green color.

Yellow.

Orange color.

Blue.

Blue color.

Purple.

invisible blue.

First appearance.

"Golden Age" of blue.

financial growth.

Blue in the era of modernity and our days.

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