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Antarès - série Coque de bateaux
Sylvie Le Pape dite Khali
Painting - 70 x 50 x 1 cm Painting - 27.6 x 19.7 x 0.4 inch
$707
Abstraction urbaine #5
Guillaume Chevallard
Photography - 49 x 69 x 2.9 cm Photography - 19.3 x 27.2 x 1.1 inch
$1,357
Insta(nt)llation - Completion. 1/ 3
Eszter Poroszlai
Photography - 30 x 30 x 3 cm Photography - 11.8 x 11.8 x 1.2 inch
$1,187
The dark side of the light
Jérôme Garrido
Painting - 100 x 100 x 2.5 cm Painting - 39.4 x 39.4 x 1 inch
$961
Recherche de motifs 14
François Azambourg
Painting - 226 x 94 x 0.1 cm Painting - 89 x 37 x 0 inch
$1,809
60lb of Dust, 2kg of Sand, 32g of Ash
Sun K. Kwak
Sculpture - 91.4 x 609.6 x 5.1 cm Sculpture - 36 x 240 x 2 inch
$72,000
Growing space VII
Gergana Tabakova
Fine Art Drawings - 25 x 25 x 0.1 cm Fine Art Drawings - 9.8 x 9.8 x 0 inch
$565
G_43
Alina Aldea
Fine Art Drawings - 70 x 100 x 0.5 cm Fine Art Drawings - 27.6 x 39.4 x 0.2 inch
$1,074 $806
Paranoïd #11
David De Beyter
Photography - 30 x 41 x 0.2 cm Photography - 11.8 x 16.1 x 0.1 inch
$396
Abstract composition in white
Tonino Maurizi
Sculpture - 28 x 21 x 3 cm Sculpture - 11 x 8.3 x 1.2 inch
$1,414
Resting my bones
Prisca Akua Kwaning
Painting - 115 x 75 x 3 cm Painting - 45.3 x 29.5 x 1.2 inch
$2,160
Guernicouille de Pine d'Assaut (Tryptique complet)
Mad Meg
Print - 65.5 x 144 cm Print - 25.8 x 56.7 inch
$1,131
Signature 16
Catherine Cazau
Fine Art Drawings - 50 x 45 cm Fine Art Drawings - 19.7 x 17.7 inch
$599
Black & white soul II
Cecile Filipe
Painting - 44 x 34 x 2 cm Painting - 17.3 x 13.4 x 0.8 inch
$1,131
En attendant le jour
Xavier Jallais
Painting - 55 x 46 x 5 cm Painting - 21.7 x 18.1 x 2 inch
$1,640
Le trait - 04
Ludovica Cholet
Fine Art Drawings - 40 x 30 x 0.5 cm Fine Art Drawings - 15.7 x 11.8 x 0.2 inch
$679
A fine balance
Bernadette Youngquist
Painting - 41 x 41 x 1 cm Painting - 16.1 x 16.1 x 0.4 inch
$1,809
Sans titre
Bernard Noël
Fine Art Drawings - 31 x 25 x 0.1 cm Fine Art Drawings - 12.2 x 9.8 x 0 inch
$905
Fille aux sacs poubelles
Eugenia Jaeger
Fine Art Drawings - 50 x 70 cm Fine Art Drawings - 19.7 x 27.6 inch
$905
Le Sacré coeur - Paris et son architecture
Lucien Dufour
Painting - 65 x 92 x 2 cm Painting - 25.6 x 36.2 x 0.8 inch
$2,120
Quatre quadrilatères 508
Anneke Klein-Kranenbarg
Sculpture - 25 x 25 x 3.5 cm Sculpture - 9.8 x 9.8 x 1.4 inch
$1,357
S/T II
Yamandú Canosa
Fine Art Drawings - 49 x 65 x 1 cm Fine Art Drawings - 19.3 x 25.6 x 0.4 inch
$2,036
Appareil photo blanc
Les Frères Guinet
Sculpture - 9 x 15 x 10 cm Sculpture - 3.5 x 5.9 x 3.9 inch
$1,809
Falling down the social slope
Catalina Vasiliu
Painting - 70 x 55 x 1.2 cm Painting - 27.6 x 21.7 x 0.5 inch
$1,267
El mundo de los vivos - The real world
Ofill Echevarria
Print - 52.1 x 72.4 cm Print - 20.5 x 28.5 inch
$900
Les jouets du philosophe
Christophe Vilar
Fine Art Drawings - 40 x 30 x 2 cm Fine Art Drawings - 15.7 x 11.8 x 0.8 inch
$2,262
Painting research III
Hongyu Zhang
Painting - 120 x 80 x 1 cm Painting - 47.2 x 31.5 x 0.4 inch
$5,428
La Belle Gabrielle
Véronique Clanet
Sculpture - 68 x 25 x 25 cm Sculpture - 26.8 x 9.8 x 9.8 inch
$5,654
Decoration
Tako Chanchaleishvili
Fine Art Drawings - 20 x 41 x 0.1 cm Fine Art Drawings - 7.9 x 16.1 x 0 inch
$622
Manufactura 3
Oriol Texidor
Photography - 40 x 50 x 7 cm Photography - 15.7 x 19.7 x 2.8 inch
$1,425
Minimal Chaos 2
Nicolas Delprat
Painting - 194 x 130 x 3 cm Painting - 76.4 x 51.2 x 1.2 inch
$5,541
Rievocazione michelangiolesca
Massimiliano Carisdeo
Painting - 50 x 70 x 2 cm Painting - 19.7 x 27.6 x 0.8 inch
$679
Hydrocarbure
Stéphane Martin
Photography - 40 x 30 x 0.04 cm Photography - 15.7 x 11.8 x 0 inch
$170
White
In physics, white is the sum of all the colours. To the human eye, white appears to be the total absence of colour. Amongst artists, white and its many uses in art are continuously evolving and challenging those who would embrace them. Is white, then, a non-colour, or an enhancer of colours? Intangible or material? Absence or excess?
Since Antiquity, white has been appreciated for its symbolic value. In Ancient Greece, where they would paint their statues, it was a sign of incompletion, whereas the Romans believed it showed pomp and imperialist virtue. With the rise of Christianity, white was used in opposition to black in order to emphasise moral dichotomies: the pure, divine white against the darkness. In some cases, however, white was used to show sickness or death, most notably in the pallid representations of the skeletal, crucified Christ.
In the Renaissance white was used to sublimate faces and backgrounds. Da Vinci even based his sfumato technique on the soft transition from light into darkness. Throughout the history of painting, white was considered precious for its ability to reflect light. It attracts the gaze even when used in the tiniest quantities, and illuminates the subject, drawing out stunning contrasts as seen in the works of Rembrandt, or in Vermeer's famous Girl with the Pearl Earring.
With the rise of Impressionism, white was used as the brightest tone amongst shades of grey. While Manet produced canvases which were forerunners to monochromes, including The Reader, which was almost pure white, Monet delivered a stunning gradient of whites whilst recreating the snow at his home in Giverny. The first true white monochrome appeared with the arrival of Malevitch's White Square on a White Background. The artist said 'I have broken the blue boundary of colour limits, and come out into the white'.
Modernists were equally passionate about white and valued it incredibly highly. Miro in particular questioned the status of white on canvases. In his painting Woman, Bird and Star white is in parts boldly painted, but is also distinctive for its absence around the star. Picasso, on the other hand, explored white in conjunction with his famous coloured periods. Piero Manzoni became famous thanks to his 'achromatic' paintings, a series of canvases produced exclusively in shades of white. Moving into the 20th century, white became synonymous with minimalist abstraction. For artists like Kandinsky, white was a cosmic colour, associated with a spiritual search for the absolute, guiding the artists as he seek to express his emotions.
Today, white remains an ever popular subject. Roman Opalka made his name creating a series of white numbers of a white background, while Daniel Arsham reinvents white walls in galleries by letting his artwork drip down onto them. White is a colour with multiple symbolic interpretations. The colour of divinity or humility; of purity and immaculate, of emptiness and absence, but always colour. If blue has Klein and red has Rothko, it appears that no artist has yet succeeded in fully mastering white – but maybe you'll find them in our selection!