Color Semantics of the Cultural Landscape

Abstract

A cultural landscape is the result of a continuous interaction between the surrounding natural landscape and culture. Meanings, symbols, and codes of culture are an integral part of it. This paper is a review of publications on current research over the past 20 years. The aim is to analyze the existing research practices, which are based on factual evidence and existing theoretical foundations, using an interdisciplinary approach, in order to come closer to a sufficiently holistic understanding of the coloristic semantics of the cultural landscape. Such a review and analysis of disparate studies allows for the first time the correlation of different types of cultural landscapes (urban, rural, gardens, and parks) and different types of signifier functions performed in them by color—signals, indices, iconic models, conventional signs or symbols, zero, or empty signs. The author analyzes the difference in the semantics of chromatic and achromatic colors and explores the landscape chromodynamics, namely, by creating the first-ever classification of the types and meanings of color foci of various durations—from days to decades. Color loci signs are continuously communicating in the cultural landscape, which is a field of constant “cultural explosion”, where traditional cultural meanings are transmitted and new meanings are generated. The author comes to the conclusion that color symbolism is part of the “landscape-as-text” containing certain information—“messages” of culture to itself. In these messages, color has sacral, temporal, and historical semantics, thus creating an extended semantic frame for the reproduction of cultural codes.