Color Culture - Rachel Chung HW

Rachel Chung
February 15, 2011
Color and Culture



The object I have chosen is an apple from the Union Square Greenmarket. An apple is a fruit that has been used since the beginning of time in many biblical tales. The symbolic meaning behind the apple starts with sin and as evolved to become a range of different symbolic meanings like power, wisdom and guidance or even being divine. Our city today is referred to as “The Big Apple”, in a connotation to a prize being awarded. Its round, bright colors was used to campaign for the city making it appear bright and cheerful with the use of the color and visual roundness of the object itself. In ancient countries, the red is the color of life and victory.

An apple can be made up of many different colors. There are many different varietals that range in being green, yellow, red or sometimes they have all three colors. “The color of anything depends on the type of light sent to our eyes; light is necessary if we are to have any perception of color at all. An object is "colored," as stated above, because of the light it reflects—all other colors are absorbed into that specific object. So then, an apple appears red because it reflects red light” (The Franklin Institute) Apple are generally perceived to be red which is the only ancient color according to the pigment sheet. Yellow being more prehistoric and green being a bit more roman. Hence, why an apple is perceived to be redder than any other colors.

The introduction of the color red was first found in cave art with the use of red made out of natural mineral like metal iron or iron oxide. These natural minerals were found in madder plants, which were dried, crushed then separated into fine powder. There are many different types of red that has evolved in history like Indian, red Oxide, Venetian and Vermillion. The evolution comes from interesting discoveries like the Camine red, which is produced from tiny insects called cochineal. The color red has been around for a very long time allowing people to perceive an apple to be closest in color to a red more than anything else. As more varieties of apples were discovered, it was in the 1800’s that green and yellow apples were discovered in correlation to how the colors yellow and green were discovered.


HUE: red yellow.
VALUE: 6 medium value.
CHROMA: its tone has a little bit of grey because it looks more natural. Perhaps like a madder red to explain the matte of color.