Chroma: Yellow

 

Yellow excites a warm and agreeable impression. If you look through a yellow glass at a landscape the eye is gladdened. In many of the shots I took at Dungeness for THE GARDEN I used a yellow sky filter on my Super 8. It produced autumnal effects. A golden colour appears when what is yellow and sunny gleams. The nimbus of the saints, haloes and auras. These are the yellows of hope. Yellow is a combination of red and green light. There are no yellow receptors in the eye. If you mix paints you will be unable to mix yellow, though the oil you use is golden. Yellow sands. Yellow streak. These are the pigments: The modern yellows: barium yellow, lemon yellow...stable in light and invented in the early nineteenth century. Cadmium yellow, sulphur and selenium. The modern production of cadmium pigments began during the First World War. Chrome yellow. Lead chromate darkens on ageing. The yellow of turmeric sunsets. 

Derek Jarman, Chroma