I don’t care what they say, white is a color to me. It is crucial in paintings, sculpture and the decorative arts.
It can glow like the translucent wing of a swan or in a cloud filled daytime sky. It can beguile as satin or lace, or create a luminous background to brilliantly colored objects. White is essential for dramatic contrast or to evoke the mysterious.
I like my friend Mark Evans’ term “magic white” for tiny specs or dots of white used to give a glint to the eye or as in my favorite Vermeer in the Rijksmuseum Collection, the gleam on a pearl earring which is the very center point of that intimate composition.
Ivory, Marble or Lacquer it is the other black in the decorative arts and equally chic.
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