https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/24/yellow-the-history-of-a-colour-by-michel-pastoureau-review

From cave art to gilets jaunes protesters … the meanings of yellow, a colour both dazzling and disliked

When he arrived in southern France in March 1888, Vincent van Gogh immediately wrote a letter to his brother, Théo: “The sun dazzles me and goes to my head, a sun, a light that I can only call yellow, sulphur yellow, lemon yellow, golden yellow. How lovely yellow is!”

The French historian Michel Pastoureau’s study of the colour begins with the cave art of the Paleolithic period and ends in the present day with the gilets jaunes protesters. This is his fifth book devoted to the history of a single colour. All are richly illustrated, but they are not just works of art history. As Pastoureau writes in the introduction to Blue (2001), “colour is first and foremost a social phenomenon”. It is society rather than nature that makes colour and gives it meaning, one that is constantly changing like sunlight on a landscape.