The Course / The History of Art in Ten Colours (Yellow) 5/10

When:
May 30, 2019 @ 10:45 am – 12:45 pm
2019-05-30T10:45:00+01:00
2019-05-30T12:45:00+01:00
Where:
The Course at The University Womens Club
2 Audley Square
Mayfair, London W1K
UK
Cost:
£50.00
Contact:
Mary Bromley
020 7266 7815

Established in 1994, The Course offers exciting lectures in Art History, Literature and

Music.Hockney “I prefer living in colours”

The very term ‘colour’ is used differently in the C21st. This course traces the fascinating history of pigments: where they came from, how they were created, and how they have changed the course of art history. It’s a story that will take us from a single mine in Afghanistan to the serendipitous discovery of a fraudulent alchemist in Berlin to a contemporary patent for the blackest black imaginable. We’ll consider both the materiality of colours – for instance, the impact of ‘fugitive’ pigments and dyes that disappear in time – and their shifting symbolism in different cultural contexts. Re-discover paintings you thought you knew by seeing them digitally returned to their ‘real’ colours and forge new connections between artists.

Richard le Gallienne

“till one comes to think of it, one hardly realizes how important and pleasant things in life are yellow”

Yellow is associated with peace and knowledge in India. But how did it go from being the Imperial colour for the Chinese to a symbol of notoriety in late C19th Europe? Discover the range of yellows from the Indian yellow made from the urine of cows fed only on mango leaves and water to the chrome of Van Gogh’s sunflowers. And learn why Kandinsky included it in his key colours and one of today’s most influential installation artists, Olafur Eliasson, uses it in his practice.