Blue Mythologies: Reflections on a Colour

Blue Mythologies explores the cultural significance of the color blue, covering various aspects such as religion, science, slavery, gender, sex, art, literature, and contemporary film. Carol Mavor's engaging and elegiac readings offer a sociological, literary, historical, and visual perspective, taking the reader from the blue of a newborn baby's eyes to the frescoes of Giottos and the films of Derek Jarman and Krzysztof Kieślowski.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 208 pages
Publication date: 15 July 2019
Publisher: Reaktion Books

The sea, the sky, the veins of your hands, the earth itself when photographed from space . . . Blue sometimes seems to overwhelm all the other shades of our world in its all-encompassing presence. The blues of Blue Mythologies include those present in the worlds religions, a robins egg, science, slavery, gender, sex, art, literature and contemporary film. Carol Mavors engaging and elegiac readings in this beautifully illustrated book are at once sociological, literary, historical and visual, taking the reader from the blue of a new-born babys eyes to Giottos frescoes at Padua, and from the films of Derek Jarman and Krzysztof Kieślowski to the islands of Venice and Aran. In each example Mavor unpicks meaning both above and below the surface of culture. In an echo of Roland Barthes essays in Mythologies, blue is unleashed as our most familiar and most paradoxical colour. Blue Mythologies gives us a fresh and contemplative look into the traditions, tales and connotations of those somethings blue.

Weight: 512g
Dimension: 230 x 161 x 15 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781789140507