GOING YELLOW

IT’S BRIGHT, EXUBERANT, AND SOMETIMES CHALLENGING. SHALL WE SAY YES TO YELLOW?

“Wearing yellow isn’t for the faint of heart. At the same time, it’s hard to look at yellow and not break into a smile.”

So observed Wendy Snyder, a New York-based, former fashion stylist with German Vogue and, today, the director/curator of the Glankoff Collection and the designer of the related SGW Collections of carpets, wall murals, and wallpapers based on her photographic excavations of the surfaces of the late artist Sam Glankoff’s “print-paintings.” Glankoff (1894-1982) was an American artist whose innovative works combined aspects of printmaking and painting in a way that was unique among the experiments of Abstract Expressionism’s groundbreaking pioneers.

“Yellow,” undated photograph by Cathy Ward, courtesy of the artist

If yellow feels inescapably exuberant, it can also be problematic for some artists and designers, or for anyone concerned about how, say, it might complement — or not — a particular hair color or skin tone. That’s because yellow can suck up the color oxygen around it, wherever it appears, just as vigorously as it radiates an intense, unstoppable energy. (On the other hand, let’s not talk about pastel yellow and the other vapid pastel colors of after-dinner mints.)

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