What is Yellow?
Why did Vincent van Gogh use so many yellow in his paintings? What does the colour yellow symbolize? What is yellow paint made of? Discover some fascinating facts about the colour yellow.
Yellow. Beyond Van Gogh’s Colour is the first exhibition to explore what the colour yellow meant to Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries. Furthermore, an installation by Olafur Eliasson provides a unique experience of this colour.
Van Gogh discovered the colour yellow while searching for the bright light and warmth of the sun in Arles, in the south of France. He wrote to his brother Theo:
‘Sunshine, a light which, for want of a better word I can only call yellow – pale sulphur yellow, pale lemon, gold. How beautiful yellow is!’
Art, fashion, music and literature
The exhibition opens with Van Gogh’s most famous yellow masterpiece, Sunflowers, before exploring art, fashion, music and literature around 1900. It explores questions like: What is yellow? How does yellow feel? What does yellow smell like?
You will discover how artists such as Van Gogh, Marc Chagall, William Turner, Wassily Kandinsky and Hilma af Klint gave meaning to the colour yellow. Traditionally, yellow was the colour of the sun, but artists also used it to express deeper meanings, emotions and ideas. In literature and fashion, yellow was associated with everything that was modern, daring and decadent.
