Color in History

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The past is much more vibrant than we imagine.

We have to deconstruct our black and white stereotypes of the past

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old cities tend to be colourful

>>2727111
>We have to deconstruct our black and white stereotypes of the past
>black and white
More like "grey and brown" steretype (churches, clothes). And white, in the case of marble.

I too have an interest in the history of colour, OP.
I was researching pictures and drawings and stumbled upon the intriguing fact that colour had vanished from humanity from the 19th century all the way to late 40s. It was a gradual change. In paintings you commonly see everything so colorful but starting from the 19th century pictures had less and less colours, eventually all pictures were black and white, indicating a complete absence of colour, coming back only during the 50s and 60s. From my own research, I have concluded that it must have been a phenomenon linked to the proletarian masses: the workers at colour producing factories were being abused as cheap labour, which, with the release of the Communist Manifesto, were inspired to make huge strikes, shutting down global colour production for decades. The result was a black and white world, spanning from the 1800s all the way to the 1940s. Eventually, racial topics emerged from this schism, culminating in Martin Luther King Jr.'s endeavours against racism. Successful, black and white were no longer separated as colours returned to the world, which was greatly celebrated by the hippies.

>>2727878
This was incredibly unfunny.

So you know how your average wargamer can easily add color value and tone to a figure half an inch high without knowing a thing about color theory?
Odds are that Roman statues did not look this shitty when they were painted.

>>2729509
I was thinking of this myself, the true coloring will remain lost

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from ancient Egypt

>>2729509
>>2729522
Well of course, only the base colors can be replicated accurately, everything else is guess work

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>>2730469
This
The statues probably look much more subtler, similar to their surviving paintings

The biggest thing missing are shadows and gradations.
Shadows were charcoal based and thus are impossible to know how they really were nowadays.

Painting statues with the base colours to show "how they looked" is worse than accepting that the painting work is lost forever and the statues should remain unpainted.

It's really retarded, they see a tiny spec of one color tone on a fabric I'm the statue and automatically think the whole fabric was painted in that single tone.

>>2727886
Especially since it's based on an old joke, I think there was a Calvin strip about that.

>>2727876
>>2727875
you know what, maybe black and white wasn't a terrible idea

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American Indians being depicted in only earth tones.

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>>2730684

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>>2730686
>tfw aztecs are always shown in brown rags and sepia tones.