Long held as a token of innocence and purity, white bears itself a history that quite contradicts its current manifestation in popular culture. White once had a rather gory past, charming humankind through the form of a tantalizing pigment called lead.
The origin of lead dates back to at least the 4th century BCE in Ancient Greece. Particularly, the raw, unprocessed lead was treated to create a brilliant, warm shade of white which was highly valued in painting. Its allure was irresistible: compared to the other dull, slightly tainted whites; lead was unmatched. As such, artists at the time stubbornly continued to use this shade despite obvious symptoms of toxicity: melancholy, stress (high blood pressure), hysteria (neurological damage), coughing, enlarged retinas and blindness. All of these contribute to what was termed “painter’s colic”: artists would ground lead into fine powder, further exposing themselves to highly toxic lead dust.
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Despite such dangers, many famous painters such as Vermeer as well as those involved in the Impressionist movement had prized lead for its density, opacity and warm glow. Clearly, white, delivered through no means but lead, took the world of arts itself and humanity as a whole by storm, embodying both the purity of beauty and artistic intention and the void of death. Fortunately, a ban on the use of this pigment, enforced in the 1970s, had successfully put a stop to many wasted lives.
From being the reaper of Grim the Reaper himself to the perennially sought-after shade of human arts, white certainly has extended itself beyond the mere role of a pigment, transcending into a phenomenon in human history. Its utter allure that once captivated artists to the point of death evidences how a colour can wield much influence, and how many great lengths humankind has been willing to go in the name of beauty.
Credits: TED-Ed
Editor: Bach Quang Do
Illustrator: Phuong Trinh Nhu