White
Save your search and find it in your favorites
Saved search
Your search is accessible from the favorites tab > My favorite searches
Unsaved search
A problem occurred
With strength and grace 02
Poonam Choudhary
Painting - 121.9 x 76.2 x 5.1 cm Painting - 48 x 30 x 2 inch
$750
Etre dans le bleu
Jean-Claude Mathier
Photography - 100 x 150 x 2 cm Photography - 39.4 x 59.1 x 0.8 inch
$1,441
2022/12-2 - GA54
Guillaume Allemand
Sculpture - 165 x 50 x 3 cm Sculpture - 65 x 19.7 x 1.2 inch
$4,353
Le vieux pot de peinture orange - 355
Yannick Bouillault
Sculpture - 13 x 25 x 17 cm Sculpture - 5.1 x 9.8 x 6.7 inch
$346
Hack Haring
Raphaël Federici (ParisSketchCulture)
Print - 48 x 70 x 0.01 cm Print - 18.9 x 27.6 x 0 inch
$949
Birches Bend to Left and Right
Rebecca Klementovich
Painting - 101.6 x 76.2 x 3.8 cm Painting - 40 x 30 x 1.5 inch
$3,200
Ombre et lumière III
Feng Hatat
Photography - 48 x 32 x 1 cm Photography - 18.9 x 12.6 x 0.4 inch
$558
Shore Break
Bernard Biancotto
Photography - 60 x 90 x 1 cm Photography - 23.6 x 35.4 x 0.4 inch
$670
Toujours la même chanson
Bertrand Thomassin
Painting - 62 x 50 x 3 cm Painting - 24.4 x 19.7 x 1.2 inch
$1,898
Post Punk Flower - Black
Shepard Fairey (Obey)
Print - 61 x 46 x 0.2 cm Print - 24 x 18.1 x 0.1 inch
$530
Ombre et lumière 7
Feng Hatat
Photography - 70 x 50 x 2 cm Photography - 27.6 x 19.7 x 0.8 inch
$670
Mémoire de JingDeZhen
Feng Hatat
Photography - 32 x 48 x 1 cm Photography - 12.6 x 18.9 x 0.4 inch
$670
Ombre et lumière #5
Feng Hatat
Photography - 48 x 32 x 1 cm Photography - 18.9 x 12.6 x 0.4 inch
$670
Ombre et lumière II
Feng Hatat
Photography - 48 x 32 x 1 cm Photography - 18.9 x 12.6 x 0.4 inch
$558
They Said I’m Stuck With My Brain For The Rest Of My Life
Simon Findlay
Painting - 20 x 15 x 2 cm Painting - 7.9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inch
$279
3 D White abstraction circles
Nataliia Krykun
Painting - 80 x 60 x 4 cm Painting - 31.5 x 23.6 x 1.6 inch
$2,009
Niño frente al espejo 2
Alejandro Toscano
Painting - 70 x 50 x 1 cm Painting - 27.6 x 19.7 x 0.4 inch
$2,690
Spring twilight at the Oslo fjord
Nadezda Stupina
Painting - 81 x 100 x 2 cm Painting - 31.9 x 39.4 x 0.8 inch
$2,724
Le Panthéon (vue de la rue Valette)
Marie France Garrigues
Painting - 55 x 46 x 2 cm Painting - 21.7 x 18.1 x 0.8 inch
$726
Poésie féminine - série Silhouette de femmes
Francine Cordier
Painting - 80 x 80 x 2 cm Painting - 31.5 x 31.5 x 0.8 inch
$1,462
Planta de saló 1
Joan Hernández Pijuan
Print - 113 x 76 x 0.1 cm Print - 44.5 x 29.9 x 0 inch
$1,953
Nailed it Series No.124
Sumit Mehndiratta
Painting - 96 x 96 x 4 cm Painting - 37.8 x 37.8 x 1.6 inch
$4,465
Bohemian Botany
Sumit Mehndiratta
Print - 102 x 102 x 3 cm Print - 40.2 x 40.2 x 1.2 inch
$2,456 $2,087
Exploflora Series No.30
Sumit Mehndiratta
Painting - 152 x 304 x 3 cm Painting - 59.8 x 119.7 x 1.2 inch
$3,349 $2,846
Musack Terry Hall tribute
Shepard Fairey (Obey)
Print - 61 x 46 x 0.1 cm Print - 24 x 18.1 x 0 inch
$335
Question d'équilibre
Véronique Baleste
Painting - 82 x 87 x 1 cm Painting - 32.3 x 34.3 x 0.4 inch
$670
Enfantillages (série)
Nagsoul
Fine Art Drawings - 40 x 30 cm Fine Art Drawings - 15.7 x 11.8 inch
$670
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!