{"id":23977,"date":"2022-12-16T15:52:35","date_gmt":"2022-12-16T15:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/?p=23977"},"modified":"2023-02-01T17:07:48","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T17:07:48","slug":"a-history-of-yellow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/a-history-of-yellow\/","title":{"rendered":"A History of Yellow"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Life Surges by Laura Menzies, \u00a3560<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

In these paintings yellow reigns. It\u2019s an intense, even demanding colour: requiring immersion, or at least an energised response from the viewer. It\u2019s only one step from its association with light to joy, vigour and celebration. This curation of yellow seeks to show it\u2019s not an intimidating colour to work with but rather, like any colour, it can move through endless applications. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are other ways the colour is employed here: with the flat theatricality of a stage set as the background in David Rae\u2019s \u2018Shooting Target 2\u2019; with tenderness in Julia Blackshaw’s portrait \u2018You are my Sunshine\u2019; for the unified energy of dancer and her environment in Artemis Louka’s painting; for abstract surge by Laura Menzies. In Natalie Chapman\u2019s portrait, \u2018If Only I Were Enough\u2019, the colours are a counterargument to the title\u2019s self-deprecation, radiating resilience and vitality, crossed with oranges and greens: the artist\u2019s tonal risks have paid off.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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If Only I Was Enough by Natalie Chapman, \u00a3650<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

You can tell a history of art through a material history of colour. One of the oldest paint pigments, yellow ochre, was used by the ancient Egyptians to paint the skin tones on their murals \u2013 and it\u2019s a colour still popular with artists today, due to its opaque quality and ability to harmonise with other colours. It\u2019s still often used for flesh tones, as well as for landscapes. Another pigment obtained from minerals long before the industrial age was the Naples yellow (from lead antimonate, making it toxic) used on ceramics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Babylonians used Naples yellow (lead antimonate) on ceramics. From the 8th century, gamboge (once made from arsenic sulphide) was used in China to illuminate manuscripts \u2013\u00a0obtained from an amber-like substance harvested from trees. It\u2019s also a traditional colour used to dye Buddhist monks\u2019 robes, particular Theravada Buddhists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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May I Bleed Light Into the Ground, Watch As I Pour by Tia Taylor Berry, \u00a31200<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
May I Bleed Light Into the Ground, Watch tAs I Prour by Tia Taylor Berry, \u00a31200<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The myth behind India yellow that replaced gamboge as a glazing colour in the mid-19th century, tells that it was made from the bladder stones of cows fed on mango leaves.\u00a0With the 19th century also came the creation of modern mineral pigments such as chrome yellow (lead chromate), which was used by Vincent Van Gogh and George Seurat. Impressionism was enabled by the developments in paint chemistry, which created brighter, more stable colours for oil painting the first time. As it turned out, the true chrome level is toxic and dissolves rapidly, a fact not known at the time. Van Gogh used it on his paintings \u2013\u00a0for sunflowers, fields and interiors. There\u2019s now an ongoing project<\/a> of excavating his paintings using laser technology to discover the history of this particular pigment, how it ages and reacts with sunlight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story of yellow also continues in the contemporary works collected here; as ever, if you’re drawn to any one of them or would like to find out more about the artist, get in touch with us to talk art! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Words by Maggie <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Clearing by Heather Carr, \u00a3285<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n
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Shooting Target 2 by David Rae, \u00a32150<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n
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Move by Artemis Louka, \u00a31,100<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n
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My Sunshine by Julia Blackshaw, \u00a3350<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n
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Sunny Day by Glib Franco, \u00a31,300<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You can tell a history of art through a material history of colour. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23980,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[325,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-curated-collections","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23977"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24363,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23977\/revisions\/24363"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}