A DEAD WHITE

A far-ranging critique of a seemingly ubiquitous hue.

Walters, a cultural critic, finds herself highly sensitive to white all around her. The first incident occurs at her son’s new school building. A refurbished older structure, she discovers that everything inside has been painted a gleaming, inescapable shade of white—“blisteringly bright and icy.” Some readers may scowl at her reaction, as did a fellow parent, but this book is not meant for those unprepared to consider their built environments’ aesthetic implications. It is instead an engaging, erudite experiment for readers who understand that “the physical world influences what we believe in” and who are able to look deeply at that world. Walters’ discerning eye looks at white paint specifically, and her focus is essentially twofold. She first observes the employment of white in art and architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright wanted the Guggenheim Museum’s gallery walls to reflect the building’s exterior hue, originally a buff color—but the museum’s director overruled him to paint the iconic interior spiral white. The White House was given cosmetic whitewash cover-ups for structural damages caused by battles and fires—symbolically suggesting “the perceived invulnerability of the White House had been a deception.” Intertwined with these broader cultural engagements, the author also incorporates her experiences of existing in a painted-white world. Rows of white houses communicate false uniformity within neighborhoods; white paint on her home’s interior walls feels like a profound error, “a spectacle of indecision.” She refuses to harden her initial suppositions into a fully oppositional conclusion, but each example she contends with is masterfully described and meaningful in its own right. “To paint something is to express power. Painting is a deliverance of force,” and Walters’ fascinating work realizes the implications of that force beautifully.

Recursive yet resounding, a carefully curated aesthetic journey.