COLOUR IN THE MAKING is structured around four essays, each of which provides the historical background for a series of case studies which illuminate art and science collaborations and innovations in the field of colour and the artists' projects they produced. Featured case studies include Louis Jaques Thenard and the French government's invention of 'French Blue' leading to Yves Klein's obsession with the same colour, Cezanne's experiments with Goethe's theories, Albers' colour experiments leading to Bridget Riley's colour fields and new developments in digital colours which led to works such as Cory Archangel's beautiful Photoshop colour gradients and Jessica Stockholder's immersive vinyl colouring the streets of Chicago. COLOUR IN THE MAKIKING uncovers an important history of art and design through the innovations that made the reproduction of coloured objects possible. Importantly Philip Ball's essay pays attention to the advances in organic chemistry in the nineteenth century (beginning with Perkin's invention of purple) which led not only to a whole new colour spectrum in a vast array of materials- including the plastics, expanding foams and various resins crucial to contemporary sculpture- but also to a new world (literally making trades that span the globe) of dyes and therefore global fashion. The objects and images of art, design and fashion tell this story, and their reproduction in print also touches on a new issue of inks, digital reproductions and lasting value of colour in print. Throughout this sumptuously colourful book artists' and designers' projects will illustrate the often behind the scenes inventions and processes of colour-making. Mark Clarke, colour conservation specialist working with the Winsor and Newton Archive, discusses colour's innovations up until the Renaissance. Through high-tech digital reproductions of old master paintings and carefully reconstructed pigments, Clarke is able to show what ancient colours really looked like at the time they were made, offering a radically different image of colour in art history. Philip Ball's essay brings the innovations of the nineteenth century to life and Carinna Parraman examines the future of inks and dyes. Foregrounding the development of new digital and 3D printing with the history of printmaking and the development of CMYK, she demonstrates that through studying the work of artists and designers, commercial colour printing is evolving. AUTHOR: Mark Clarke is a Tutor at the University of Amsterdam on the materials and techniques of the Flemish Primitives. He is the author of The Art of All Colour and Mediaeval Painters' Materials and Techniques: (the Montpellier Liber Diversarum Arcium). Philip Ball is a freelance science writer. He has contributed to publications ranging from New Scientist to the New York Times, The Guardian, the Financial Times and New Statesman. Dr Carinna Parraman is senior research fellow and deputy director at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UWE Bristol and has worked with a range of organisations including the Tate, National Gallery, Hewlett Packard and RolandDG. ILLUSTRATIONS: 300 colour and b/w
