Michael Pastoureau - Preto: História de Uma Cor

There is something about the color black that sets it apart from the others.

The color of darkness and death, it is also associated with dignity and authority. Its ambivalent symbolism has followed the cultural evolutions of Europe, seducing pirates, monks, artists, fashion designers, and fascists. Associated with sin and hell by Christianity, black lost its status as a color at the beginning of modernity, with Newton’s experiments and the invention of the printing press. It survived through exoticism, in the romantic cult of melancholy, influencing poets and dandies, until it triumphed masterfully in the arts of the 20th century and became the ultimate color of elegance and modernity.