It has been associated with death and negativity throughout history. But without black, you wouldn’t be reading this, fashion would lose its power to flatter – and there’s only one cat that’s lucky, isn’t there? Is black a colour? No, say scientists. In the visible spectrum, white reflects light and so is actually a presence of all colours. But black absorbs it, sucks it all in. True black is the absence of colour. Black is what happens when no light at all reaches your eye. Except, of course, that we almost never see pure black. Unless you happen to have the misfortune to be gazing into a black hole, everything you perceive as black has some light, however small, bouncing back at you. Throughout history, for many cultures and societies, black and white have stood as opposites: white the positive, pure light, black its negative counterpart. From the Greeks, who sat the god of the underworld, Hades, on a black ebony throne to the Romans – death, in Roman poetry, was the _hora nigra_, or the black hour – black was not a friendly colour. Continue reading...
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