Nautilus

The Split Personality of the Color Yellow

Why does the color we associate with wholesome things like bananas, sunshine, and honeybees—“the color of hope, joy, and optimism,” according to one of the world’s foremost color experts—also signify the creeping presence of illness and death?

Not death in the abstract: the dark-cloaked, scythe-brandishing spirit of Victorian art, or the symbolic black vestments worn at funerals. No, yellow connotes death in more concrete,

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