Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Pink: The History of a Color

Pink: The History of a Color

Pastoureau, Michel
Gladding, Jody

Hardcover

Series: History of a Color

PhilosophyArt Criticism & TheoryArt History

Publisher Price: $39.95

ISBN10: 0691266263
ISBN13: 9780691266268
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: Feb 11 2025
Pages: 192
Weight: 2.60
Height: 0.79 Width: 9.29 Depth: 9.37
Language: English

From the acclaimed author of Blue and other color histories, the beautifully illustrated story of pink, from the first ancient pigments to Barbie

Pink has such powerful associations today that it's hard to imagine the color could ever have meant anything different. But it's only since the introduction of the Barbie doll in 1959 that pink has become decisively feminized. Indeed, in the eighteenth century, pink was frequently masculine, and the color has signified many things beyond gender over the course of its long history--from the prim to the vulgar, and from the romantic to the eccentric. In this richly illustrated book, Michel Pastoureau, a celebrated authority on the history of colors, presents a fascinating visual, social, and cultural history of pink in the West, from antiquity to today.

Pink pigments first appear in ancient Macedonian paintings, but it was not until the eighteenth century that vivid, saturated pinks were developed for dyeing and painting. At the same time, a popular new flower--the pink rose--finally gave the color a standard name, and pink, assuming a place in everyday life, began to acquire its own symbolism, distinct from that of red, yellow, or white. Bringing the story up to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Pink describes how the color, both adored and detested, became associated with many other things, from softness and pleasure to nudity and sex.

Illustrated throughout with a wealth of captivating images, Pink is an entertaining and enlightening account of the evolving role and significance of the color in art, fashion, literature, religion, science, and everyday life across the millennia.

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