A Dead White

An impassioned, boundary-pushing work of criticism traversing an array of subjects, from fine arts to design to architecture, taking aim at the ubiquity of white paint in our society and what its prevalence reveals about our values

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 doesn’t carry its own 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, brilliantly surprising 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 that scaffold, house, and surround us—and what the collective impulse towards white paint can tell us about our culture, our politics, and our individual desires.

Tracing the unquantifiable impact of white paint, in our lived environment and in our collective imaginary, A Dead White is a polemic and a meditation, braiding 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 aesthetics and national identity, never losing sight of how this cultural inclination manifests in our choices and habits as individuals. Deeply investigated and anchored by Walters immediate sensory experiences and instincts, her intelligence and lucid prose grounds this encompassing, utterly fresh work of cultural criticism.