| dc.description.abstract | Artists invented the first pigments—a combination of soil, animal fat, burnt charcoal, and chalk—as early as 40,000 years ago, creating a basic palette of five colors: red, yellow, brown, black, and white. Since then, the history of color has been one of perpetual discovery, whether through exploration or scientific advancement. The invention of new pigments accompanied the developments of art history’s greatest movements.
Political colors are colors used to represent a political ideology, movement or party, either officially or unofficially. It is the intersection of color symbolism and political symbolism .Parties in different countries with similar ideologies sometimes use similar colors. As an example the color red symbolizes left-wing ideologies in many countries (leading to such terms as "Red Army" and "Red Scare"), while the color blue often used for conservatism, the color yellow is most commonly associated with liberalism and right-libertarianism, and Green politics is named after the ideology's political color. The political associations of a given color vary from country to country, and there are exceptions to the general trends. For example, red has historically been associated to monarchy or the Church, but over time gained association with leftist politics, while the United States differs from other countries in that conservatives is associated with red and liberalism with blue. Politicians making public appearances will often identify themselves by wearing rosettes, flowers or ties in the color of their political party.
Locally here in Uganda colors have a very big significant say in the politics of our country. Uganda being a multi political country it means it has very many political parties and these political parties have different colors. NRM is represented by yellow, NUP represented with red, ANT is on the other hand represented by purple and green for DP and many other political affiliations to talk but a few. To narrow it more here in Uganda’s capital city, Kampala, politics have brought about a lot of influence in the color representations. Almost all the works we do, we be very sensitive with color since we may be attached to the political ideologies which may not particularly be our intention.
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To say more about color and Ugandan politics, we see color bringing a lot of influence in the social understanding and use of color. It is seen that Ugandans attach color understanding to the prevailing leadership. I.e. when one is wearing a yellow garment no matter where he/ she is going they will attach the ruling government NRM even if the person wearing the cloth is meaning something else. This has been seen in the streets of Kampala where red and yellow are competing for supremacy in the political atmosphere. Basing on the recent situation that happened in the city red wearing individuals were seen showing their influence to the public where everyone who wasn’t in that color or was spotted in yellow was either beaten or chased away. This is because that the yellow color was attached to the political group they are competing against. In this context color and politics have therefore caused chaos and instability. | en_US |
