study task 2 - a history of art in three colours - white

The focus on white was the real reason I wanted to watch the series, after having read the book 'inside the white cube' and looking into galleries, the way they're set up and why, Pete suggested looking at a history of art in three colours and what they had to say on it. I found the documentary extremely interesting and helpful and its given me lots of new ideas to think about and create work from as well as educating me on the history of the colour white in our society and the influence it has had. Specifically I am most interested in the part whistler has had to play in the creation of the white gallery and want to research this further. I thought the documentary was an informative and reliable source to use for research as it comes from a respected source (the BBC) and was clearly a well researched and presented programme. Below I've summarised what I found to be the most important and interesting points.

'In the Age of Reason, it was the rediscovery of the white columns and marbles of antiquity that made white the most virtuous of colours. For the flamboyant JJ Wickelmann and the British genius Josiah Wedgewood, white embodied all the Enlightenment values of justice, equality and reason.'

'the elgin marbles were widely seen as the bedrock of ancient art, like many ancient sculptures the elgin marbels were once painted in rich colours... which had washed away. at one point we became convinced these sculptures had always been white'

why was Davine so desperate for these sculptures to be white?

Johann Joachim Winckelmann
'the whitewashing of antiquity' Winckelmann planted white at the centre of European culture for centuries to come, he decided to dedicate his life to persuading the world of the beauty of white sculpture and white marble. His writings influenced a new science of archaeology and art history as well as Western painting, sculpture, literature and even philosophy

1859, James Abbott McNeil Whistler 
took it upon himself to make white, not the colour of equality but of exclusivism and elitism. from a wealthy Massachusetts family
its a really elitist painting, because what this painting sets out to do is to divide the Victorian public, to divide people who don't understand the painting and those who do, those who did understand the painting were whistler and his tiny intellectual elite.

whistler despised the publics taste, he wanted to banish them from the art world altogether. in 1883 he opened an exhibition of new pictures he made on a trip to Venice, it wasn't the pictures but the way he displayed them - the walls were white, the frames were white even his gallery attendant was in white. he called his exhibition a masterpiece of mischief. completely unwelcoming, 

'white had become the cold and exclusive colour of the artistic elite'

'white is the negation of bourgeois decoration, its the negation of the superflous'