Author(s): Ben Street

Art & Photography

Trace the history of art through 48 paintings and four colors, woven together to form a fascinating and kaleidoscopic tale.

BLUE: the color of the beyond and the divine
RED: the color of blood, purity and sensuality
GREEN: the color of new life, but also of sickness and death
GOLD: the color of wealth, attributed to the things we value most

These four colors tell the history of art in a way that few other details can. From the pigments that hold them - sometimes wildly expensive, like Ultramarine, or dangerously toxic, like Emerald Green - to the varied and changing meanings applied to them, these colors grant us access to fascinating stories, both of individual works of art and the world in which they were created