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 itdoes 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. Hardcover, 352 pages