Depth in colour, a history of a chapter in physiologie optique amusante

Abstract

Two centuries ago, Goethe wrote in his Farbenlehre about blue as a receding colour, against yellow/red as a colour 'piercing into the organ'. Though any verification of these psychological attributes seems to be absent, this depth effect in colour still seems to be taken for granted in art history. In visual science, the completely different and far better documented colour stereoscopic effect, known as chromostereopsis, prevails. A historical account is given of the development of ideas about this chromostereopsis, often by amusing trials and errors. The original explanation by Bruecke in terms of chromatic aberration (in present-day literature usually indicated as transverse chromatic aberration) and a temporal off-axis position of the fovea still forms the basis of present-day understanding, even though Bruecke rejected his own explanation. It had to be complemented by an additional off-axis effect of the pupil, not in an anatomical sense, as Einthoven presumed but failed to find but in a functional sense by a non-centric StilesCrawford effect. Although a comprehensive individual experimental proof is still missing, the evidence available indicates that a satisfactory quantitative explanation has been reached. Figure 1A). Listeners to the talk had been sent the picture in advance. De Wilde indicated how Gestel had disregarded conventional depth cues like perspective or light incidence and that he had attained an impression of depth by his particular use of colour. 'If you put violet next to yellow or green next to orange, the violet and the green retreat. In general, the warm colours come forward, and the cool colours retreat. Gestel has made use of these properties of colour to give his shapes plasticity. The shadow of the chin is green and therefore retreats and the chin becomes convex. The violet around the eyes retreats with respect to the yellow of the cheek. The eyes, then, sink further back in space. ' I must confess that De Wilde's psychological attribution of depth to colour did not convince me. Would the painting really loose its credibility when in black and white ( Figure 1B)? Would the chin turn concave when printed in complementary colours? A few of these experiments only confirmed my doubts. The knowledge that a face is convex is so strong a depth cue that it overrules every other depth cue. Even changing left and right pictures in a stereoscope does not affect the credibility of a person's convex appearance. 2Where does the story of evading and protruding colours come from? Most probably Goethe must be the source. In his Farbenlehre, 3 he argued that, 'like we see the high sky, the far away mountains, as blue, in the same way a blue field seems to recede'. Also, 'One can stare at a perfectly yellow/red field, then the colour seems to pierce into the organ'. Goethe did not do any experiments to measure 139the presumed effect of depth and it may even be doubted whether he would have really intended 'pierce into the organ' as an expression of distance in terms of centimetres or, to be histori...

Illusory Depth Based on Interactions Between Fluorescent and Conventional Colours: A Case Study on Frank Stella’s Irregular Polygons Paintings

“…Artists of all times have used this rule to create the illusion of landscapes and call the fact that cool colors recede and warm colors advance: 'atmospheric perspective'. In 1868 Bruecke first described the stereoscopic effect of colors as 'chromostereopsis', which means that when pure, extreme spectral colors like blue and red are observed in a rather controlled situation (side by side in a dark surrounding), the blue hue can appear as receding and the red as protruding (Vos, 2008). They appear at different depths due to 'chromatic aberration', in which the prismatic shifts of the edges go in opposite directions in the two eyes.…”

Sensual Light? Subjective Dimensions of Ambient Illumination

“…It would be also interesting to verify whether some connotative qualities of colors responsible for the advancing/retreating effect (Chen & Lin, 2015; Einthoven, 1885; Katz, 1935; Vos, 2008) or the expansion/contraction effect (Katz, 1935) in surfaces can be subjectively perceived also in relation to lighting space.…”

Thermal Interaction for Improving Tactile Artwork Depth and Color-Depth Appreciation for Visually Impaired People

“…Another possible application of the temperature-depth algorithm is for conveying the effect of chromostereopsis through temperature. Chromostereopsis [2] is the effect produced by colors on a flat two-dimensional surface by which each color seems to be located in different depth planes, in spite of the two-dimensionality of the image [19]. It is important not to mistake this effect with the association made by artists between red colors and blue colors as advancing and receding colors, since that idea might be based on the brightness produced by atmospheric haze, which is associated with distance, rather than with the effect of chromostereopsis [20].…”