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

Its 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 its neutralthat it has no signifiers or, perhaps more troublingly, that what itdoessignify, 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 usand 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 Whitebraids 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 Walterss immediate sensory experiences and instincts, her intelligence and lucid prose ground this encompassing, utterly fresh work of cultural criticism.

Wendy S. Walters is the author ofMultiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal,Troy, Michigan, andA Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint.Her writing has appeared inThe New York Times,Harpers,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.

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publish Date: October 13, 2026
• Pages: 352
• Language: English
• Type: Hardcover
• EAN/UPC: 9781982178550
• Dimensions:8.4 in H | 5.5 in W | 0.8 in T | 0.97 lb Wt
• BISAC Categories: Arts & Hobbies, Literary Fiction