All and everything / by Marcin Lodyga

Imagine that you are a guide in an art gallery similar to Tate Modern in London; people follow you and you explain: this work here is about yellow and expresses yellow and nothing more, the next work made by X is about yellow and expresses yellow and nothing more, and this work of art made by Y is about yellow and expresses yellow and nothing more, and the work made by Z is about yellow and expresses yellow... After the tour it turns out that according to you all of the (let's say a thousand) different exhibited works which are derived from different periods of art and were created for various reasons are about yellow and express yellow and nothing more, so people ask: "are you blind and stupid?" You equated, as some dictator, the whole richness of meanings, symbols, references (and also the lack of meanings and  the whole abstraction) to a single expression, so... fuck off! Immediately after this indictment they would kill you :-) It could not happen in a large yellowistic chamber where in the same way you would explain a thousand variously-looking pieces of  yellowism (every piece done by someone else); it can be pieces of yellowism visually very simmilar to the works of art that you have explained in the gallery.  In the yellowistic chamber, people aware of the context in which they are located would say that you are right - all pieces in the chamber are about yellow and express yellow and nothing more.


In art, unlike in yellowism,  ALL and EVERYTHING is not flattened to yellow; therefore yellowism is not art.*

*Of course this is not the only reason, from which yellowism is not art. Ask me and I will give you more...

The definition of yellowism for encyclopedias, dictionaries and textbooks.

Yellowism is an autonomous phenomenon in contemporary visual culture. It derives from the visual arts and despite this fact, is not classified as art, what is in accordance with its essence. It was defined in 2010 by Marcin Łodyga and Vladimir Umanets. Characteristic feature of yellowism is the lack of a creative element. All manifestations of yellowism are about yellow, are identical in content and differ only in terms of form. Pieces of yellowism are cause of expansion of yellowism and are not the result of the creative process and evolution. Yellowism can easily be seen as a kind of art or creativity; however, such thinking belies its true nature. Yellowism can be presented only in the special yellowistic chambers. Yellowistic chamber is a closed room with violet walls that is not an art gallery and because of its nature, cannot exist or be presented in an art gallery. On 15th Nov 2010 in Giza, in the Natalia Vodianova Yellowistic Chamber was opened the first exhibition of yellowism called "Flattened to yellow”, on which, for the first time, the manifesto of yellowism was presented. The opening date of this exhibition is considered as the beginning of yellowism.

“Examples of yellowism can look like works of art, but are not works of art. We believe that the context for works of art is already art. The context for yellowism is nothing but yellowism. Pieces of yellowism are only about yellow and nothing more. All manifestations of yellowism have the same sense and meaning and express exactly the same. In yellowism, all the possible interpretations are reduced to one - are equalized, flattened to yellow. Interpreting yellowism as art and being about something other than just yellow deprives yellowism of its only purpose.”

- fragment from early version of manifesto of yellowism by Marcin Lodyga and Vladimir Umanets.

What pieces of yellowism are about and what pieces of yellowism express

YELLOW

 –noun

1. a color like that of egg yolk, ripe lemons, etc.; the primary color between green and orange in the visible spectrum, an effect of light with a wavelength between 570 and 590 nm.