Life is not black and white

Colors fascinate us; they change our moods for better or worse. When worn, they tell us stories. So why not explore them in depth? In fact, we know many more feelings than we do colors. For this reason, each color can have different, often contradictory, meanings and evoke different emotions.

This is the starting point of Eva Heller, professor of Communication Theory and Color Psychology, in her book, The Psychology of Color (Hoepli, 2025, pp. 312, also available as an ebook). Let's think about it: the same red can be inappropriate or noble. The same green can be gaudy or soothing. A yellow can be radiant or jarring. No color is meaningless, none is neutral, whether from an individual, historical, or cultural perspective. Let's focus, as Eva Heller does, on blue and its nuances. The most precious and sought-after color in Western art until the modern era was ultramarine blue (used for the Madonna's cloak), obtained from lapis lazuli, an ornamental stone that came primarily from what is now Afghanistan. It was an expensive and rare pigment, often replaced with blue made from azurite, a copper derivative found in Europe, less expensive than lapis lazuli but certainly not cheap. Even today, blue is the color of elegance, of official ceremonies, suitable for English brides on their wedding day. Take, for example, yellow, a color favored by the nobility in the Middle Ages because it resembled gold and the sun. Yet today, no powerful figure on Earth would sport a lemon-colored dress as a sovereign a thousand years ago would have done with joy. Yellow has become something else, synonymous with a certain flamboyant extravagance, unless you're leading the Tour de France cycling race. And yet, in the pages of our book, we discover that while today pink and red are typically feminine colors, while blue and light blue are more often associated with men, centuries ago it was the exact opposite, and red, a symbol of fire and strength, was the most virile color possible.

Drawing on this historical and cultural data, Eva Heller provides a wealth of information on colors: from popular sayings and wisdom to their use in product design, their psychological impact, and even the names and surnames associated with colors. Above all, she explores the relationship between colors and feelings, demonstrating that they don't come together randomly, as their associations aren't simply matters of taste, but universal experiences deeply rooted in our language and thought. As painter Wassily Kandinsky wrote: "Color is a means of exerting a direct influence on the soul. Color is a key, the eye is the hammer that strikes it, the soul is the instrument with a thousand strings." This is why the reality around us is never simply black and white.