The Rainbow Book – F. Lanier Graham, Larry Wurn, Mark Burstein
The Rainbow Book, edited by F. Lanier Graham, Larry Wurn, Mark Burstein / ISBN 9788880562283 / an attractive 228-page hardback, 7.5 x 12 inches, published in 2023 by Nero (Italy), reprinting a book from 1975 San Francisco
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The Rainbow Book is a collection of essays and illustrations devoted to the rainbow and color spectra, analyzing the significance of color (both physical and metaphysical) from antiquity to modern times… An encyclopedia of the cultural and artistic manifestations of the rainbow: in myth, magic and paintings, as well as in prints and poems. The book includes poems by Virgil, Dante, Blake, Keats, Wordsworth, and others; paintings by Giotto, Bosch, Van der Weyden, Dürer, Rubens, Blake, Turner, Constable, and Church; and the sacred art of Tibet
The book is a reprint of a cult text of post-1968 psychedelic culture published in 1975 in Berkeley, California, on the occasion of The Rainbow Show exhibition held at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
The book is printed on sheets of different colors, according to the rainbow spectrum, and reports notions of increasing complexity, accessible at first to younger readers and later to the more experienced and interested in the subject.