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Offscreen (Roi-Fö II)
Franck Kemkeng Noah
Painting - 160 x 200 x 3 cm Painting - 63 x 78.7 x 1.2 inch
$11,090
Black tattoo
Sylvie Julkowski-Egard
Painting - 80 x 80 x 2 cm Painting - 31.5 x 31.5 x 0.8 inch
$1,697
Unveiling illusions
Maria Esmar
Painting - 140 x 220 x 0.2 cm Painting - 55.1 x 86.6 x 0.1 inch
$7,242
Les amants
Guillaume Lachapelle
Sculpture - 6.4 x 17.8 x 12.7 cm Sculpture - 2.5 x 7 x 5 inch
$3,848
La soupirante
Guillaume Lachapelle
Sculpture - 13 x 11.9 x 7.1 cm Sculpture - 5.1 x 4.7 x 2.8 inch
$2,716
Insécables (Diptych)
Guillaume Lachapelle
Sculpture - 14 x 17 x 6.1 cm Sculpture - 5.5 x 6.7 x 2.4 inch
$4,300
Be My Star
Elvira Carrasco
Photography - 135 x 100 x 1 cm Photography - 53.1 x 39.4 x 0.4 inch
$4,979
Meta Color XIX
Sven Pfrommer
Photography - 70 x 140 x 2 cm Photography - 27.6 x 55.1 x 0.8 inch
$2,818
Roudaki jouant de la harpe
Mohammad Ariyaei
Painting - 70 x 100 cm Painting - 27.6 x 39.4 inch
$3,621
Bruler dans tes yeux
Laurent Anastay-Ponsolle
Painting - 40 x 40 x 3 cm Painting - 15.7 x 15.7 x 1.2 inch
$1,415
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
$283
Series: Portrait rendering #3
Keita Kushima
Painting - 90 x 70 x 3 cm Painting - 35.4 x 27.6 x 1.2 inch
$4,866
Chanel Kid Cup – Sculpture
Léo & Steph
Sculpture - 55 x 15 x 15 cm Sculpture - 21.7 x 5.9 x 5.9 inch
$11,882
Encrucijadas y revelaciones
Gustavo Díaz Sosa
Painting - 27 x 55 x 1.5 cm Painting - 10.6 x 21.7 x 0.6 inch
$2,376
Trio ours PopArt Basquiat
André Gacko
Sculpture - 86 x 26 x 26 cm Sculpture - 33.9 x 10.2 x 10.2 inch
$4,300
Gathering under umbrellas
Lisa Golightly
Painting - 40 x 40 x 1.5 cm Painting - 15.7 x 15.7 x 0.6 inch
$6,337
Where there is love there is Life Gandhi
Gardani Art
Painting - 129.5 x 99.1 x 3.8 cm Painting - 51 x 39 x 1.5 inch
$6,100
Fire not lost
Emily Redd
Fine Art Drawings - 35.6 x 53.3 x 0.3 cm Fine Art Drawings - 14 x 21 x 0.1 inch
$295
Bouquet de marguerites
Patrice Marchal
Painting - 90 x 30 x 2 cm Painting - 35.4 x 11.8 x 0.8 inch
$2,320
Lipstick Red variation
Marc Ferrero
Painting - 150 x 150 x 4 cm Painting - 59.1 x 59.1 x 1.6 inch
$73,556
Vies blanches/diptyque
Raphael Scorbiac
Sculpture - 235 x 160 x 30 cm Sculpture - 92.5 x 63 x 11.8 inch
$23,764
Over-reaction: Squirreling half-eaten food in your bedroom again?!?! We can get mice!!!
Lauren Naomi
Painting - 121.9 x 274.3 x 4 cm Painting - 48 x 108 x 1.6 inch
$9,279
Margueritte Daisies
David Mccrae
Photography - 20.3 x 25.4 x 0.3 cm Photography - 8 x 10 x 0.1 inch
$250
Lola sleeping
Helen Uter
Fine Art Drawings - 40 x 40 x 0.1 cm Fine Art Drawings - 15.7 x 15.7 x 0 inch
$543
Les filles d’honneur... (En scène)
Olivier Messas
Painting - 100 x 120 x 2 cm Painting - 39.4 x 47.2 x 0.8 inch
$3,621
Elles n'ont pas d'épines
Valérie Auriel
Painting - 100 x 81 x 2 cm Painting - 39.4 x 31.9 x 0.8 inch
$2,739
Zone interdit 3
Dominique Liccia
Fine Art Drawings - 32 x 24 x 0.1 cm Fine Art Drawings - 12.6 x 9.4 x 0 inch
$509
YO! Queen Elizabeth.
JP Malot
Fine Art Drawings - 8.5 x 16.5 x 1 cm Fine Art Drawings - 3.3 x 6.5 x 0.4 inch
$181
Spring landscape Spring view River Nature painting
Irina Pronina
Painting - 49 x 38 cm Painting - 19.3 x 15 inch
$396
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!