History
Over two centuries ago, the effect of color depth perception was first noted by Goethe in his Farbenlehre (Theory of Colours) in which he recognized blue as a receding color and yellow/red as a protruding color. 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 color seems to pierce into the organ”. This phenomenon, now referred to as chromostereopsis, or the stereoptic effect, explains the visual science behind this color depth effect, and has many implications for art, media, evolution, as well as our daily lives in how we perceive colors and objects.
Although Goethe did not propose any scientific reasoning behind his observations, in the late 1860s Bruecke and Donders first suggested that the chromostereoptic effect was due to accommodative awareness, given that ocular optics are not achromatic and red objects require more accommodation to be focused on the retina. This notion of accommodation could then be translated into perception of distance. However, what Donders and Bruecke originally missed in their theory is the necessity of binocular observation to produce chromostereopsis. Later, veering off from accommodative awareness, Bruecke proposed that chromatic aberration, along with the temporal off-axis effect of the pupil, can explain the chromostereoptic effect. It is this hypothesis that still forms the basis for our present day understanding of chromostereopsis.
Over the years, art analysis has provided ample evidence of the chromostereoptic effect, but until about thirty years ago little was known about the neurological, anatomical and/or physiological explanation behind the phenomena. For instance, in 1958 Dutch art historian De Wilde noted that in analyzing cubist painter Leo Gestel's painting "The Poet Rensburg", instead of using conventional graded depth cues, "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". In this sense, the chromostereoptic effect gives shapes plasticity and allows for depth perception through color manipulation.
Read more about this topic: Chromostereopsis
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