A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint

Longlisted for the National Book Award in Nonfiction

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

It's 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 it's neutral--that it has no signifiers or, perhaps more troublingly, that what it does signify, 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 us--and 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 White braids 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 Walters's immediate sensory experiences and instincts, her intelligence and lucid prose ground this encompassing, utterly fresh work of cultural criticism.

Author: Wendy S. Walters
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Published: 10/13/2026
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.97lbs
Size: 8.51h x 5.41w x 1.11d
ISBN: 9781982178550


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 07/01/2026 pg. 60
Kirkus Reviews 07/01/2026

About the Author
Wendy S. Walters is the author of Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal, Troy, Michigan, and A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Harper's, 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.