• 17/07/2022
• By binternet
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Yellow, story of a fallen color<

Savoirs by Camille Renard Facebooktwittermail

History |Could the "yellow vests" have been blue or green?From yellow laughing that smells sulfur to the star of the Jews, the symbol of cuckolds and the stigma of traitors to the "yellow jersey" of leaders, yellow has an exciting story.

The history of yellow is that of a long devaluation by the Christian West.Michel Pastoureau, medieval historian, specialist in color, insists on the entanglement between moral and color values, whose traces persist in the collective unconscious, until today.

From prehistory, man masters this color, in the form of an ocher in parietal paintings.Quickly, we know how to dye yellow thanks to plants like broom or saffron.In classic Antiquity, yellow is valued.The Roman dressed in ceremonies or weddings.

With Christianity, the Middle Ages degrades the value associated with yellow.After the failure of the crusades, we are looking for enemies inside the country.Exclusion codes are created, infamous clothes to stigmatize.Judas is first represented with red hair, then wears a yellow dress from the 12th.Yellow therefore also, the rolle or the star which designates the Jews from the 13th century in European cities;A sign that the Nazis will resume in the 1930s. Yellow becomes the color of ostracism.Medieval symbolism makes yellow the color of cheaters, traitors, felonies, lies, disease.

The golden color absorbs the positive symbols of the yellow - sun, joy, power.Yellow becomes a matte, sad color, which recalls fall or decline.He is a sulfur associate, which we believe that the vapors cause a demonic laugh, a “yellow laugh”

He is also associated with madness.The buffoons or the madmen are dressed.We paint the house of false monnayeurs in yellow.In the 19th century, the deceived, cocusted spouses, were caricatured in yellow costume with the valuation of electricity, and the scientific deposit of the three primary colors, including yellow.

Yellow is slowly rehabilitated.He modernized with the "yellow jersey", invented in 1919 by the ancestor of the team.It becomes synonymous with "leader" in France or Italy while the Christian gold ceases to be its rival, the orange competition, symbol of joy and dynamism.In the 2000s, the "high security vest" was yellow to decide visible with the environment and protect truckers or cyclists.But yellow is still not completely rid of its negative tinsels.