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Table of Contents
About The Book
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 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. Deeply investigated and anchored by Walters’s immediate sensory experiences and instincts, her intelligence and lucid prose ground this encompassing, utterly fresh work of cultural criticism.
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. Deeply investigated and anchored by Walters’s immediate sensory experiences and instincts, her intelligence and lucid prose ground this encompassing, utterly fresh work of cultural criticism.
About The Author
Photograph by Anna Letson
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, The Yale Review, BOMB, and others. She is a recipient of fellowships from Creative Capital, The Architectural League of New York, NYFA, and Mass MoCA. For The Metropolitan Museum of Art, she cocurated the exhibition Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast, which was called “a master class in presenting complicated, troubling art.” She is an associate professor of nonfiction in the Writing Program of the School of the Arts at Columbia University.
Product Details
- Publisher: Scribner (October 13, 2026)
- Length: 352 pages
- ISBN13: 9781982178550
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Raves and Reviews
"White paint is a powerful aesthetic force hiding in plain sight. In A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint, Wendy S. Walters—essayist, curator, and cultural critic—dismantles our collective faith in white as neutral, tracing its influence in art, architecture, design, and domestic life. Along the way she reveals the values embedded in what we've been taught to see as a blank slate. Part polemic, part meditation, by turns personal and philosophical, and entirely original, this is the rare work of criticism that will change how you see the world around you." —Meghan O'Rourke, author of The Invisible Kingdom
"What happens when an object or material you’ve been taking for granted suddenly stops looking normal and benign? Why does it—in this case the white paint on the walls of your son’s school—unsettle you? This could be the start of an intricate procedural or horror tale. But Wendy S. Walters is an intrepid and original cultural critic, and for her white paint never stops generating literal and fiercely symbolic meanings. Walters uses her investigative tools to probe history, aesthetics, science, politics, and her own life. Detectives provide solutions; critics offer revelations. How exhilarating to be shown that nothing in our physical world must be ignored or unquestioned. Design, decoration, school, home, cityscape, landscape: they are not backgrounds in our lives. They are main characters." —Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland and Constructing a Nervous System
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