James Fox

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Broadcaster and art historian Dr James Fox looks at humankind’s relationship with colour and uncovers the meanings we have attached to colours and the ways they have shaped our culture and imagination.

Fox takes seven primary colours – black, red, yellow, blue, white, purple and green – and uncovers a root idea behind each one that’s common to all societies. He says understanding them allows us to see milestones in the history of art in a new way, from Bronze Age gold-work to Turner, Titian, and Yves Klein. Colour, he argues, also tells the history of the world from the black nothing that preceded existence to the colour that embodies the environmental crisis of today.

Fox is an art historian and fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. His BBC television documentaries include programmes on the history of Cornish art, the British Renaissance and the culture and politics of Vienna in 1908, Paris in 1928 and New York in 1951.