The Meaning of the Colour White
Introduction
White is the lightest colour and just like black, it’s achromatic. It’s often considered the opposite of black because while black absorbs light - white completely, or almost completely, reflects and scatters light. We associate the colour with snow, chalk and modern interior design, and it’s a colour that has been popular throughout history and continues to be to this day. Along with black, white was also one of the first colours used in art, found in both calcite and chalk - palaeolithic artists used it to paint cave walls, and even then, it was used as a highlight. The word white can be traced back to Proto-Germanic and is found in some variation throughout the Germanic languages. Proto-Germanic also had the word “blankaz”, meaning “shining/blinding/bright”, which was later borrowed into Late Latin as “blancus” and is the source of the Romance words blanc, blanco, bianco, etc. While these are the two variations of white in European languages, several non-European languages have a bigger variety of words for the colour. The Inuit language has seven different words for different nuances of white. Sanskrit has specific words for different types of white, like the white of teeth, the white of sandalwood, the white of silver, the white of a ray of sunlight, and the white of stars, to name a few. Similarly, Japanese has a few different words depending on the brilliance of the colour, as well if it is inert or dynamic.
Before 1666, when Isaac Newton demonstrated that white light was composed of multiple colours by passing light through a prism to break it up into different colour components and then using a second prism to reassemble them back into white, most scientists and artists believed white was a fundamental colour of light. This is how white light is being expressed through your screen right now, by using a combination of red, green and blue at full intensity. That’s digital white, as a physical colour, white used to be made from lead, until the beginning of the 20th century, when chemical companies in Norway and the US began producing titanium white from titanium oxide. Titanium white had twice the covering power of lead white and was the brightest white pigment known at the time, and still to this day is the most common type of white pigment.
My strongest association with the colour is probably snow. Snow is composed of ice and air, making it scatter or reflect sunlight without absorbing other colours. Because of its qualities, white is a colour that highlights any and all darker colours on it, and because of this, it’s often associated with cleanliness. When white gets dirty, you can very easily tell. Snow is much the same, and the snow of the forest is not the same as the snow of the city. Snow in a city is dirty, filled with black pollution and all kinds of filth and grime. It’s for the same reason white is often used in hospitals, kitchens and other places that need to keep a high level of hygiene. Sterile white light and white backgrounds allow you to easily spot stains and grunge. It’s this quality that has led to white primarily being associated with cleanliness throughout history and across cultures.
In Culture
We spoke of black being the antonym of white, and because of this, in colour symbolism, white often represents the opposite of black. We bury our dead in black and wrap our newborns in white. It’s a colour prevalent in both clothing and architecture and is generally associated with purity, good, honesty and cleanliness as well as the new. In ancient Rome, a plain white toga was a symbol of citizenship, and the Romans had two words for white: albus, meaning a plain white, and candidus, a brighter white. A man who wished for public office in Rome often wore a white toga brightened with chalk, referred to as a toga candida, where the word candidate is derived from. Albus is the root for the word albino, and later Latin would come to adopt the Proto-Germanic word blankaz. The Romans also had a virgin Goddess called Vesta, and the priestesses who worshipped Vesta would dress in white linen robes, wear white shawls and a white veil, and they were responsible for protecting the sacred fire and the penates of Rome. The white they wore became a symbol for their purity, loyalty, but also chastity. This meaning for white has stayed in Rome and lives on through the Catholic church. The early church adopted this symbolism of white as a colour of purity, sacrifice and virtue.
It’s the colour worn by priests during Mass and worn by several monastic orders under the Catholic church, e.g the Cisterian Order. It also became the official colour worn by the pope after Pope Pius V, who himself was a former monk of the Dominican Order. Monks of the order of Saint Benedict used to dress in white or grey, but later changed to black as a symbol of humility and penitence, similar to many monastic orders of the Eastern Orthodox tradition. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, a white unicorn became a symbol for chastity and purity, and became a common subject in manuscripts, paintings and other works of art. According to legends, the mythical creature could only be captured by a virgin, and it wasn’t uncommon to find depictions of a white unicorn resting in the lap of the Virgin Mary. Another common symbol at the time was the white lamb, which symbolised the sacrifice of Christ on behalf of humanity, and again symbolised sacrifice, purity and grace. In Islam, during the pilgrimage to Mecca called hajj, pilgrims wear white seamless cloths as a requirement to enter a purified state of Ihram. The white clothing symbolises equality of all pilgrims in front of God and is meant to distance man from material pride and to encompass him in a world of purity and spirituality. They also serve as a reminder of the shrouds covering the dead, and serve as a reminder of death.
While white is commonly associated with life, in ancient Egypt, black was the colour of life, associated with the black and fertile soils created by the flooding of the Nile. White was to the Egyptians a colour of death, representing the lifeless desert which covered much of the country. In some asian countries, white or specifically the white-ish colour of undyed linen is associated with mourning and funerals. In traditional China, undyed clothing is worn at funerals, and as time passes, the grieving can gradually begin wearing clothing with colour again. In these and other traditions in Asia, white is the colour of reincarnation. Rooted in Chinese philosophy, the concept of Yin and Yang as opposites and duality, white is used to represent the masculine aspect called Yang, and the feminine aspect Yin is, of course, represented using black. Ancient board games like Go and chess both use black and white to represent two sides. In the English language, many terms use white symbolically.
“A white lie” is an innocent lie told out of politeness, and a “white knight” is a saviour or some kind of heroic figure that often saves a damsel in distress. Specifically, in the UK, a “white feather” is a symbol of cowardice. During the First World War, women were encouraged to give white feathers to non-enlisted men as part of an enlistment campaign by the military. “White noise” is a term colloquially used to describe a backdrop of ambient sound creating an indistinct soundscape, which can be a result of many different sounds coming together into a seamless commotion. Like chatter from multiple conversations, several machines running or a public space filled with people. White noise is sometimes used by people to help them focus or sleep as they perceive it to clean up or cover up undesirable noise; it purifies the mess by throwing a white blanket over it, and visual and auditory unity is achieved through perceived homogeneity.
So while white may be perceived as a homogenous colour, its symbolism isn’t quite as unified. There are many different meanings and even paradoxical ones. However, it is commonly used to symbolise cleanliness, beginnings, innocence and sacrifice. It’s both a symbol of life and death. Ghosts and phantoms are often associated with the colour, and consider if you will, for a moment, the word: wight. In the Book of Revelation, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is Death, who rides a white or pale horse. In English, there is the expression “pale as a ghost”. White is often viewed as the opposite of black as a fundamental symbol of dualism. In painting, before the Renaissance, painters rarely mixed colours. The influential Italian artist Leon Batissta Alberti encouraged artists to add white to their colours to make them lighter and brighter, which led to the palette of the Renaissance being considerably brighter. White is used to highlight and to give the illusion of light in painting, and most canvases are white to begin with.
A blank canvas is a symbol for a new start, something which is without expression and impression, and as we know, the word blank comes from the Proto-Germanic word blankaz, meaning a bright white. To me, a white canvas is hopeful and impressionable, it’s filled with possibility and potential, and there is no telling what it will be until more colour is added to it. White may be the other side of the same coin as black, and in a lot of ways, they’re very similar and their excellence is in their union because without the other, both of the colours are matte, boring and one-dimensional. But together, they bring depth through contrast to life.
In My Work
White, just like black, is fundamental to painting. The two colours are essential to the most simple practice of shading and highlighting, and while more complex theory includes a larger spectrum, at its most basic form, any light cast follows the rule of three: Highlight - where the most intense part of light hits an object, a halftone - the area between the highlight and the core shadow, and finally the core shadow - which is the darkest part of an object and is of the opposite side of where the light hits the object. I do not strictly adhere to this logic in my art, and often ignore halftones completely. Shadows cast are often completely black and contrasted with intense white highlights, giving an unnatural shine to the light within my paintings.
White to me is an idealistic and supreme unity, which both precedes and succeeds the material world and its filth and grime. Beyond symbolising cleanliness, it’s a symbol of order and authority, but also humility. Cleanliness is understood by us as orderly, and chaos is the duality of order, but in reality, light is what gives us the understanding of what chaos is. In darkness, all is equal, and the dust in the corner of your rooms is as invincible as you. With light, we can perceive and discern chaos from order, and the illuminated mind is a spotlight whose concentration sees what the spirit wills, and illumination is to see clearly what is what. In a lot of my art, white helps represent duality.
Light dissolves dark, and in my work, where colours are bold and outlines often dark, white serves as a stark contrast and an empowerment of the light in these visual stories. The light in a lot of my paintings is a pure white light, and it can make it cold and sterile, but also contrasts with the chaos in the rest of the painting. It brings order and clarity, even for just a brief moment, or even if just to highlight a small thing. I often add a speck of white as a highlight in eyes, to give faces that glint, and hope to their eyes. Shadows are cast, and characters either face the light or turn away from it, and it serves as a reminder that we make the same choice in our lives. White in all its order, purity and cleanliness is also a type of melancholy to me, just as black is a certain type of happiness.
White, as previously mentioned, contains several colour components at such an intensity that we experience them as a uniform achromatic colour. To me, colours symbolising feelings means white is apathetic in a way. It’s so much that you’re overwhelmed or worse: bored. If too intense, then we become numb, and if the colours in our lives are too intense as well, perhaps life becomes orderly and uniform, but also devoid of nuance, and it becomes boring and sterile. White is a fun colour because it’s got so much potential and because it highlights the good things in life, and while it also shines on the bad, it helps us see and it guides us. But if it remains just white, it’s nothing special. Just like a black background, if you just stare at it long enough, something fun happens. There are so many similarities between the two colours, and I think my work would be meaningless without the two, but it’s important to understand what functions they have and to use both fully.
A white canvas with a black dot is stained, but a black canvas with a white dot is a lone star in space. A black hole is consuming, but the white light from a star is life-giving. Yet on their own, both are emptiness. A whole lotta nothing that gives space to a whole lotta something. White is fundamental; it’s the colour of the bones, which serves as the foundation of the temple. In its positives, it's clarity, purity, and hope, and in its negatives, it's boring, cold and empty. Its perfection stems from what it is and as it is, and that perfection is perfectly ordered and undiluted.
