interventions: The Whiteness of the Whale
Some consider white to be a color, because white light comprises all hues on the visible light spectrum. And many do consider black to be a color, because you combine other pigments to create it on paper. But in a technical sense, black and white are not colors, they're shades that augment colors.
The chapter in Moby Dick titled The Whiteness of the Whale is a passionate musing on the strange whiteness of the whale. It concerns the white whale’s strange dread power. In many cultures around the world, whiteness is seen as a sign of nobility, of high birth, of royalty, or of leadership—white, when embodied in certain animals, lends them a kind of splendor, as in the albatross, the white shark, or the white horse.
But the whiteness has another dimension—that of shadows, of ghosts, of things that are haunted. The color white carries a supernatural, alien quality because it is the absence of color, because it is so rarely found in nature in its purest form—without any other color contaminating it—and because “by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe.” It is both the beautiful, appealing quality of white and its upsetting, ghastly, supernatural quality that imbue the search for the white whale with special significance.
Click here on saving the right whale.
The selection of images below documents two out of five rogue events installed in November 2020, New York, NY,
materials: acrylic paint, acid-free ink, archival arches paper (30 X 22 inches)
