부산대학교 도서관

The color black has emerged as one of the most favorite color these days. It is preferred over other colors in various fields such as fashion, architecture, interior design, home appliances, and furniture. For this reason, there have been many studies on black in fashion, packaging design, marketing, building materials and so on. These case-based researches have mainly focused on short-term trend analysis, prohibiting in-depth study that provides information about symbolism of black on the human mind. Digging a little deeper into the history of black, this study traces the genealogy of the color black symbol. We concludes that the meaning of ‘subversion’ was added to black by dandies and Charles Baudelaire’s works in 19th century. It is not only based on a literature review analyzing the costumes in art works but also on a social semantics discussing the social functions of color.