The relativity of yellow

Proof that color is light.

Since I found out about The Floating Piers nearly a year ago, it was described as an art installation featuring "100,000 square meters of shimmering yellow fabric."  But even from Christo's early renderings, it seemed awfully orange to me.  I still might ultimately call the color "orange."

But I have to admit, the color was elusive at best. It's almost as if Christo, like Monet and his paintings of the Rouen Cathedral, was asking us to wonder at the constantly surprising, shifting colors in the world around us. And shift these colors did.  In bright sunlight, The Piers lived up to the promise of "shimmering yellow". In late afternoon, an electric orange radiated from walkways, a color so intense my camera had a hard time focusing.  When The Piers got wet, the color flattened and intensified to become more playful, but definitely orange. 

No matter how the color changed, it was obvious that Christo knew what he was doing.  The yellow/orange of The Piers was always a perfect compliment or antidote to the misty greens and blues of the lake and surrounding mountains or the rusty reds and browns of the Italian villages. Whatever you call it, this yellow never disappointed.

The perfect accessories

The local bird population seemed to be as enamored with The Piers as the humans.  The swans arrived perfectly accessorized with their yellow/orange beaks.

Follow the yellow silk road

Almost like a flood, the yellow fabric creeped out of the lake and up through the streets of Sulzano.

Yellow everywhere

It often felt like everything in the region had been turned yellow.  These barricades were all over Italy, but in Sulzano it felt like they had been specially made just for this event. And everything from buses to flashing traffic signals seemed to have lovingly adopted the color.