From Surface to Meaning ― Analyzing Via Color

Looking at color can be a way not only to think within or about culture but also to probe the boundaries of cultural approaches. The “Cultural Turn,” as it has been called, has made an impact across disciplines. In history, it replaced long-established explanatory models provided by Marxism and modernization theory. Even fields like art history and literature, which always considered themselves allied to the arts rather than to the sciences, were reshaped by new understandings of culture—for instance, as a much larger system of meaning in which the works they studied were a part. But “culture” is notoriously murky, and its analytical use can obfuscate patterns of causality. This volume analyzes how looking at color can take us further.