Yellow - (History of a Color) by Michel Pastoureau (Hardcover)

About the Book

A renowned authority on the history of color and the author of celebrated volumes on blue, black, green, and red now traces the visual, social, and cultural history of yellow. Focusing on European societies, with comparisons from East Asia, India, Africa, and South America, he tells the intriguing story of the color's evolving place in art, religion, fashion, literature, and science.

Book Synopsis

From the acclaimed author of Blue, a beautifully illustrated history of yellow from antiquity to the present

In this richly illustrated book, Michel Pastoureau--a renowned authority on the history of color and the author of celebrated volumes on blue, black, green, and red--now traces the visual, social, and cultural history of yellow. Focusing on European societies, with comparisons from East Asia, India, Africa, and South America, Yellow tells the intriguing story of the color's evolving place in art, religion, fashion, literature, and science.

In Europe today, yellow is a discreet color, little present in everyday life and rarely carrying great symbolism. This has not always been the case. In antiquity, yellow was almost sacred, a symbol of light, warmth, and prosperity. It became highly ambivalent in medieval Europe: greenish yellow came to signify demonic sulfur and bile, the color of forgers, lawless knights, Judas, and Lucifer--while warm yellow recalled honey and gold, serving as a sign of pleasure and abundance. In Asia, yellow has generally had a positive meaning. In ancient China, yellow clothing was reserved for the emperor, while in India the color is associated with happiness. Above all, yellow is the color of Buddhism, whose temple doors are marked with it.

Throughout, Pastoureau illuminates the history of yellow with a wealth of captivating images. With its striking design and compelling text, Yellow is a feast for the eye and mind.

Review Quotes

"Yellow: The History of a Color is the fifth such volume that Pastoureau has produced. Like its predecessors, which recount the visual and cultural histories of blue (2001), black (2009), green (2013), and red (2017), this one is elegant and engaging -- as alluring to gaze at as it is compelling to read. Yellow may be an unsettling color, but this is a lovely and striking book."---Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe

"Yellow: The History of a Color takes readers on a Eurocentric tour of the color."---Alicia Eler, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"[Yellow: The History of a Color] tells the fascinating story of yellow's evolving place in art, religion, literature and science from its sacred and symbolic status in antiquity, through its demonic associations with lawlessness when tinged with green, but in its pure state, still engendering feelings of pleasure and abundance, to its positive position in Asian societies and its lasting status as the colour of Buddhism."---Wendy and Ian Lipke, Queensland Reviewers Collection

"Beautifully illustrated. . . . [Pastoureau] unpicks the meanings of the colour by delving into a broad range of cultural references, from history, clothing and myth to art and etymology, and shows the different roles each colour has played in society and how they have changed."---Michael Prodger, The Times

"If you are contemplating going to a museum, or purchasing a painting for millions for your private collection, this book is going to involve less gas or less investment, and the outcome might be more nourishing."---Anna Faktorovich, Pennsylvania Literary Review

"Like Pastoureau's earlier volumes, this is a beautifully produced book and an impressive work of scholarship . . . it is a fascinating and sensual celebration of our complex love-hate relationship with what Goethe called this 'joyous colour'."---Peter D. Smith, The Guardian

"Michel Pastoureau continues his study of colors, following up on similar works about blue, black, green and red. Pastoureau's book, a measured and scholarly approach, is filled with images of art and artifacts as well as the color's interesting role in world history."---Diane Cowen, Houston Chronicle

"Pastoureau's main aim is not simply to record how hues have been used, but to seek out the various values they have expressed and embodied in different times. . . . Yellow is worth buying as much for its sumptuous images as its scholarship."---Kevin Jackson, Literary Review

"Richly illustrated and impressively wide-ranging."-- "The Week"

"The French scholar Michel Pastoureau investigates how individual colours have been viewed and used in the past. Yellow: The History of a Colour is the successor to similar volumes on blue, green, black and red. But it turns out that yellow has had an intriguing, though chequered, time."---Martin Gayford, The Spectator Australia

"Yellow is in part the story of gold, but that was just the beginning, Michel Pastoureau points out in the fifth of his lively, informative, brightly illustrated series about individual colours."---Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Times

"Yellow is perhaps the most difficult of the colors Pastoureau has undertaken so far. Nonetheless, he handles it with the same sure hand and informed historical perspective he did its predecessors (Blue, Green, Red, and Black). . . . Visuals are handsome and accompanied by text that is both scholarly and easily readable, and that addresses subjects ranging from perception, philology, etymology, and dyes and pigments, to the artistic and symbolic use of color from antiquity onward."---R.M. Davis, Choice

About the Author

Michel Pastoureau is a historian and emeritus director of studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études de la Sorbonne in Paris. A renowned authority on the history of colors, symbols, and heraldry, he is the author of many books, including Blue, Black, Green, and Red (all Princeton). His books have been translated into more than thirty languages.