Subscribe to our newsletter
Wendy S. Walters is the author of Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal; Troy, Michigan; and A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The Yale Review, BOMB, and others. She is a recipient of fellowships from Creative Capital, The Architectural League of New York, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Mass MoCA. More about this author >
Filed in the following archives
From the publisher:
It’s hard to identify a material that takes up more sensory space and has received less critical examination than white paint. As the default color of our built environment, it asks us to believe that it’s neutral—that it has no signifiers or, perhaps more troublingly, that what it does signify, whether it be calmness, cleanliness, blankness, or purity, is unassailable and value-free. In this expansive, impassioned examination, cultural critic Wendy S. Walters interrogates all that we have taken for granted about the substance that colors, or fails to color, the structures and objects that surround us—and what the collective impulse toward white paint can tell us about culture, politics, and individual desire.
Tracing the unquantifiable impact of white paint on our lived environment and in our collective imaginary, A Dead White braids together multiple narrative threads and associations. Exploring the role of white paint in art history, architecture, and consumer culture, it follows its influence into the home, the halls of the workplace, the galleries and studios of the contemporary art world, and larger forums of mass culture and national identity, never losing sight of how this cultural inclination manifests in our choices and habits as individuals.
