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Yellow: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Yellow
The cave of Lascaux in France holds a painting of a horse colored with yellow ochre that is approximately 17,300 years old, marking one of the earliest uses of this hue in human history. This prehistoric pigment, derived from clay, was one of the first colors available to early artists because it was widely found in nature. The ancient Egyptians later adopted yellow ochre and the brilliant but toxic pigment orpiment to represent gold, which they believed was the imperishable skin of their gods. In their tomb paintings, men were depicted with brown faces while women and gods were shown with yellow ochre or gold faces, establishing a visual language that linked the color to divinity and eternity. The Romans continued this tradition, using yellow in their murals to depict gold and skin tones, a practice that persisted through the centuries until the discovery of synthetic pigments in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Betrayal And The King
While yellow symbolized gold and divinity in ancient Egypt, it took on a darker meaning in the Post-Classical period when it became firmly associated with Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus Christ. Although the Bible never describes Judas's clothing, the color yellow was used to mark him and subsequently became a symbol of envy, jealousy, and duplicity. This negative association led to the tradition of marking non-Christian outsiders with yellow, such as the Jews in 16th-century Spain who were compelled to wear a yellow cape before the Spanish Inquisition if they refused to renounce their views. In Nazi-occupied Europe, this history of exclusion culminated in the requirement for Jews to sew yellow triangles with the star of David onto their clothing. Conversely, in China, bright yellow was the exclusive color of the emperor and his household, worn only by the royal family and used to welcome special guests on a yellow carpet. The last emperor of China, Puyi, described in his memoirs how every object surrounding him as a child was yellow, instilling in him a consciousness of his celestial nature and unique essence.
The Painters And The Pigments
The 19th century brought a revolution in the availability of yellow through the discovery of synthetic pigments, replacing traditional yellows made from arsenic, cow urine, and other substances. Vincent van Gogh, an avid student of color theory, wrote to his sister from Arles in 1888 about the sun being a light he could only call yellow, bright sulfur yellow, and pale lemon gold. He painted sunflowers inside a small house he rented at 2 Place Lamartine, a house painted with a color he described as buttery yellow, using commercially manufactured paints like chrome yellow and cadmium yellow. However, the new synthetic colors were not always stable; Georges Seurat used zinc yellow or zinc chromate in his pointillist paintings, not knowing that the pigment was highly unstable and would quickly turn brown. The history of yellow pigments includes toxic substances like orpiment, which was used until the 19th century, and modern replacements like azo pigments. The development of these colors allowed artists to create moods and emotions, such as the glowing yellow clouds in J.M.W. Turner's painting Rain, Steam, and Speed , the Great Central Railway.
When was the earliest known use of yellow ochre in human history?
The earliest known use of yellow ochre in human history occurred approximately 17,300 years ago in the cave of Lascaux in France. This prehistoric pigment derived from clay was one of the first colors available to early artists because it was widely found in nature.
Why did ancient Egyptians use yellow ochre and orpiment in their tomb paintings?
Ancient Egyptians used yellow ochre and the brilliant but toxic pigment orpiment to represent gold, which they believed was the imperishable skin of their gods. In their tomb paintings, men were depicted with brown faces while women and gods were shown with yellow ochre or gold faces, establishing a visual language that linked the color to divinity and eternity.
How did the meaning of yellow change during the Post-Classical period regarding Judas Iscariot?
During the Post-Classical period, yellow became firmly associated with Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus Christ, and subsequently became a symbol of envy, jealousy, and duplicity. This negative association led to the tradition of marking non-Christian outsiders with yellow, such as the Jews in 16th-century Spain who were compelled to wear a yellow cape before the Spanish Inquisition if they refused to renounce their views.
What synthetic pigments replaced traditional yellow pigments in the 19th century?
The 19th century brought a revolution in the availability of yellow through the discovery of synthetic pigments, replacing traditional yellows made from arsenic, cow urine, and other substances. Artists like Vincent van Gogh used commercially manufactured paints like chrome yellow and cadmium yellow, while Georges Seurat used zinc yellow or zinc chromate in his pointillist paintings.
What is the dominant wavelength range for the color yellow on the visible spectrum of light?
Yellow is the color the human eye sees when it looks at light with a dominant wavelength between 570 and 590 nanometers, placing it between green and red on the spectrum of visible light. Modern optogenetics has utilized yellow lasers at 589 nm and 594 nm, which are less common and more expensive than other colors, to manipulate biological processes.
When did the Yellow Vests protest take place in France and what was the cause?
The Yellow Vests protest in France took place in November and December 2018, where an opposition movement went into the streets to protest against the fiscal policies of President Emmanuel Macron. This event revived yellow as a symbol of political movements in the 20th and 21st centuries after it had been used as a symbol of exclusion during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Yellow is the color the human eye sees when it looks at light with a dominant wavelength between 570 and 590 nanometers, placing it between green and red on the spectrum of visible light. In color printing, yellow is one of the three subtractive primary colors of ink along with magenta and cyan, used to print any full color image. On color television or computer screens, yellow is created by combining green and red light at the right level of intensity, a process distinct from the subtractive mixing used in printing. The complementary color of yellow has been a subject of scientific debate; while traditionally considered purple, scientists like Grassmann and Helmholtz concluded that the complement of spectral yellow is indigo, a wavelength that today's color scientists would call blue or blue-violet. Modern optogenetics has utilized yellow lasers at 589 nm and 594 nm, which are less common and more expensive than other colors, to manipulate biological processes. These lasers are created using diode pumped solid state technology, where an infrared laser diode pumps a crystal to emit light at specific frequencies that generate yellow light.
The Biology Of Autumn
Autumn leaves turn yellow because the veins that carry fluids into and out of the leaf are gradually closed off as daylight hours shorten and temperatures cool. During this time, the chlorophyll begins to decrease, and the yellow and red carotenoids become more and more visible, creating the classic autumn leaf color. Carotenoids are common in many living things, giving the characteristic color to carrots, maize, daffodils, rutabagas, buttercups, and bananas. They are responsible for the red of cooked lobsters, the pink of flamingoes and salmon, and the yellow of canaries and egg yolks. Xanthophylls, the most common yellow pigments, form one of the two major divisions of the carotenoid group and are found in the leaves of green plants. They also find their way into animals through the food they eat, such as the yellow color of chicken egg yolks, fat, and skin, which comes from the feed the chickens consume. Bananas are green when picked due to chlorophyll, but once picked, hormones convert amino acids into ethylene gas, which stimulates enzymes to change the color, texture, and flavor, eventually turning the bananas brown as the cell walls break down.
The Politics Of Caution
In China, yellow is the color of happiness, glory, and wisdom, and the legendary first emperor of China was called the Yellow Emperor. The palace of the Emperor was considered to be in the exact center of the world, and after the Song dynasty, laws banned the use of certain bright yellow shades by anyone but the emperor. In contrast, in the West, yellow is not a well-loved color; a 2000 survey found that only 6% of respondents in Europe and America named it as their favorite color, compared with 45% for blue. Yellow is considered a color of ambivalence and contradiction, associated with optimism and amusement but also with betrayal, duplicity, and jealousy. In Islam, the yellow color of gold symbolizes wisdom, while in Buddhism, saffron colors of robes to be worn by monks were defined by the Buddha himself and his followers in the 5th century BCE. The color of robes varies among different schools of Buddhism, with forest monks in Thailand wearing robes of a brownish ochre dyed from the wood of the jackfruit tree, while
The Global Symbolism
city monks wear saffron.
The 20th and 21st centuries saw yellow revived as a symbol of exclusion, as it had been in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, with Jews in Nazi Germany and German-occupied countries required to sew yellow triangles with the star of David onto their clothing. However, yellow also became a symbol of political movements, such as the Yellow Vests protest in France in November and December 2018, where an opposition movement went into the streets to protest against the fiscal policies of President Emmanuel Macron. The color has been used in modern art, such as Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project, which used humidifiers to create a fine mist and a semi-circular disc made up of hundreds of monochromatic lamps which radiated yellow light. In music, the Beatles released the No. 1 hit Yellow Submarine in 1966, and Donovan's Mellow Yellow popularized a widely held belief that it was possible to get high by smoking scrapings from the inside of banana peels. The color continues to be used in technology, such as the Eye Saver Yellow slide rule developed by Pickett
The Modern Yellow
Brand in the 1960s, which was produced with a specific yellow color that reflects long-wavelength rays and promotes optimum eye-ease.