Michel Pastoureau is a historian of Western symbolism, known worldwide for his work on the history of colors in the West. A specialist in colors, images, and beasts, he has also published about ten books on the meanings of heraldry, coats of arms, and emblems. He is a professor at the Sorbonne and at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, where he holds the chair of the History of Western Symbolism.
Lecture: “In painting, which is the least demanding of all the arts because of the means it employs, it is merely a manual work. Music, on the other hand, is a work of the mind, it comes from the mind and returns to it. For a painter, a certain accuracy in colors, drawing, and perspective is enough to satisfy us; our eye, accustomed to seeing everything, is hardly offended by a mediocre quality painting, whereas our ear, much more demanding, is aggrieved by the slightest false note. This is why a painter only needs to be somewhat of an artist to find a larger and more tolerant audience than an equally talented musician.” – Goethe, “Theory of Colors,” 1810
Sports: An Illustrated History, from 1860 to the Present (with Georges Vigarello), Seuil, October 10, 2025. Many works recount the history of modern sports. However, few consider this history from a purely cultural perspective, and even fewer devote pages to the movements, gestures, shapes, costumes, codes, and colors that have accompanied sports over the decades. Michel Pastoureau and Georges Vigarello attempt to fill this gap. As specialists in bodily practices and sign systems, they study the evolution of these over more than a century and a half. The spectacular and exciting nature of sports due to the confrontations it stages is undeniable; however, it also requires a setting, a backdrop, a “milieu,” a visible translation of the performers’ feats and the stakes of the competitions. This book highlights this, drawing on abundant iconographic material such as photographs, posters, paintings, press drawings, postcards, and film archives.
The Donkey: A Cultural History, Paris, Seuil, October 31, 2025. Domesticated around the 4th millennium BCE, the donkey plays a considerable role in the material culture and daily life of peoples in Mediterranean Antiquity. Documents mostly show an animal that works: it carries, pulls, pushes, treads. Symbolically, its image is mostly positive, even if mythology presents a more nuanced portrait and fables and proverbs emphasize its obstinacy and lack of insight. In the Middle Ages, the donkey’s image deteriorates significantly: it becomes a symbol of laziness, lust, stupidity, madness. Its ears now adorn the heads of fools, jesters, and madmen. The horse competes strongly with it and confines it to subordinate tasks. The donkey becomes an animal in the service of the poor and is more or less despised. Only sacred history valorizes it: it had the honor of witnessing the Nativity and carrying Christ during his entry into Jerusalem. In modern times, the symbolism of the donkey gradually reverses: the fool becomes wise, and the obtuse animal, clear-sighted. Zoology makes real progress. Buffon makes it an autonomous species and praises its qualities. Romantic sensibility takes over and, starting in the 19th century, pities this overly humiliated and brutalized animal. Poets, storytellers, artists offer a renewed, friendly, benevolent portrait of it, which extends to this day in children’s books, the world of toys, cinema, video games, emblems, and symbols. Today, few animals have a higher level of sympathy than the donkey.
Association of the keys and colors for Scriabin’s Colors’ Keyboard; Alexandre Scriabine: Prometheus op. 60 (The Poem of Fire), Martha Argerich, piano; Claudio Abbado, conductor, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Sony Classical 88985320352-05.
