The fabric of silence: When a single colour tells the infinite

Since then, this obsession with a single colour has spanned the ages—from Byzantine mosaics to touchscreens, from Yves Klein’s performances to Gerhard Richter’s grey canvases. But why does a palette reduced to its extreme fascinate artists, designers, and even luxury brands? Perhaps because it reveals what other colours conceal: the power of emptiness, the poetry of constraint, and that strange alchemy that turns a simple pigment into an almost mystical experience.

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The black square and the birth of a new sacred

Imagine a world where art no longer represents anything. Where a geometric shape becomes the symbol of a spiritual revolution. That is precisely what Malevich proposed in 1915. His Black Square is not just a painting—it is a manifesto. At the time, Russia was in turmoil: war raged, revolution brewed, and the artistic avant-garde desperately sought to break with the past. Malevich took the logic to its extreme. "I have transfigured art into the zero of form," he wrote. That black square, hung in the upper corner of an exhibition hall—where, traditionally, Orthodox icons presided in Russian homes—became an anti-icon. A deliberate provocation.

Yet behind this apparent simplicity lies a troubling complexity. X-ray analyses revealed that beneath the layer of black paint lay a cubo-futurist composition, as if Malevich had erased his own doubts before reaching this radicality. And then there are the cracks in the paint, those fissures tracing invisible constellations, as if time itself had decided to add its touch to the work. "The square is not a square," Malevich said. "It is a sensation."

This idea of colour as a gateway to pure abstraction would infect an entire generation. In 1918, Malevich pushed the concept further with White Square on a White Field: this time, the shape almost disappears, leaving only the faintest nuance between subject and background. "I have reached the white. It is beyond," he declared. For him, white was not the absence of colour but "the colour of the infinite." An idea that, decades later, would inspire both New York minimalists and Scandinavian designers.

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Yves Klein and the blue that swallows the world

If Malevich chose black for its power to rupture, Yves Klein made blue a religion. In 1960, the French artist invented International Klein Blue (IKB), an ultramarine so intense it seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. "Blue has no dimension," he wrote. "It is beyond the dimensions that other colours occupy." For Klein, this blue was not a colour but a "mystical experience," a means of capturing the immaterial.

His obsession with blue dated back to his adolescence, when he symbolically "patented" the sky over Nice as his first work of art. But it was with the Anthropometries that he took the concept to its extreme. In a now-famous performance, nude models, coated in his IKB, lay down on white canvases under his direction. "They are my living brushes," he explained. The result? Imprints of bodies that seemed to float in space, like blue ghosts.

Klein didn’t stop there. In 1958, he organised The Void, an exhibition where the gallery walls were painted white, and the only object present was… an empty display case. "Art must be invisible," he declared. A provocation that foreshadowed contemporary installations, where absence becomes presence. Then there is that unsettling anecdote: in 1960, Klein patented his IKB, as if to ensure no one else could claim "his" blue. A decision that today echoes the controversy around Vantablack, that black so deep it creates the illusion of a hole in space—and which artist Anish Kapoor also tried to appropriate.

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Gerhard Richter: grey as a mirror of the soul

While Malevich and Klein explored the extremes of the chromatic spectrum, Gerhard Richter chose grey. "Grey is the colour of indifference," he said. "But also of neutrality, of balance." In the 1970s, as Germany still bore the scars of the Second World War, Richter embarked on a series of monochrome canvases where grey dominated. No shapes, no symbols—just layers of paint scraped, spread, superimposed, as if the artist were trying to erase something.

His Gray Paintings are enigmas. Some canvases appear almost photographic, with gradients so subtle they evoke a morning fog. Others, more textured, recall the crumbling walls of the German cities of his childhood. "I don’t seek to represent grey," Richter explained. "I want it to become an experience." For him, grey was neither sad nor boring—it was a colour "without memory," allowing everything to begin anew.

This obsession with the neutral took on a political dimension in his October 18, 1977 series, where he painted blurred images of members of the Red Army Faction, who died in mysterious circumstances in prison. "The blur is a way of saying: I don’t know," he admitted. "I can’t decide." In Richter’s work, grey thus became the symbol of an era where certainties had collapsed.

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When monochrome becomes a sensory experience

Monochrome is not just about painting. It can also be an immersion, a performance, a way of rethinking space. Take Olafur Eliasson and his Weather Project (2003), installed in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. A giant half-sphere, bathed in an orange-yellow light, reflected in a mirror on the ceiling, creating the illusion of an artificial sun. Visitors lay on the floor, mesmerised by this light that seemed to come from nowhere. "I wanted people to feel the sublime," Eliasson explained. "Not through an image, but through a physical experience."

Or James Turrell, who transforms entire spaces into monochrome light installations. In Skyspace, a circular room with an opening to the sky, natural light gradually shifts to artificial colours, creating an almost imperceptible transition between day and night. "Colour is not in the object," Turrell said. "It is in how light reveals it."

Even in design, monochrome becomes a quest for purity. The Japanese studio Nendo created a series of "invisible" furniture, painted in a shade that blends perfectly with the walls. "The idea isn’t to disappear," explained Oki Sato, the founder. "But to create such perfect harmony that objects go unnoticed." An approach reminiscent of Scandinavian interiors, where white dominates to let the space breathe.

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Monochrome in the digital age: between minimalism and saturation

In the age of screens, monochrome takes on a new dimension. Digital interfaces—from apps to websites—adopt reduced palettes for practical reasons: battery efficiency, readability, sleek aesthetics. But behind this simplicity lies a paradoxical complexity. "Digital monochrome is never truly monochrome," explained designer Irène Pereyra. "Even a black screen emits residual light. It’s an illusion of absence."

Take dark mode, now a standard in applications. Originally a feature to reduce eye strain, it quickly became an aesthetic choice, even an identity. "Black is chic, mysterious, a little rebellious," Pereyra noted. "It’s the colour of luxury brands, high-tech interfaces, and underground movements." major tech companies, with its "Space Black," or Tesla, with its minimalist interiors, have turned monochrome into a symbol of sophistication.

Yet this obsession with digital minimalism hides a contradiction. "The more streamlined our screens become, the more saturated the world they display," observed art critic Jonathan Crary. "Behind a black background, anything can be hidden." An idea that resonates with NFTs, those digital tokens where monochrome images sell for millions. In 2021, Beeple’s The First 5000 Days, a digital collage, sold for $69 million—though it contained hundreds of colours. But months earlier, a simple black square, Everydays: The First 5000 Days, had also fetched record prices at auction. "Monochrome is the ultimate flex," quipped one collector. "It’s saying: I don’t need to prove anything."

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The single colour as an act of resistance

Yet monochrome has not always been synonymous with luxury or minimalism. It has also been a tool of protest, a way of saying "no" to the system. In the 1960s, the artists of Capitalist Realism—a German movement that parodied both socialist realism and Western consumerism—used reduced palettes to critique society. "Grey was the colour of divided Germany," Richter explained. "The colour of the Berlin Wall, of factories, of uniforms."

More recently, monochrome has become a symbol of ecological resistance. "Fewer colours mean fewer chemicals, less waste," said designer Stella McCartney, who uses natural hues in her collections. Even in architecture, "raw concrete"—that unadorned, grey material—has become the signature of sustainable aesthetics. "Monochrome is anti-greenwashing," noted architect Winy Maas. "It’s accepting that beauty can arise from simplicity."

And then there are artists who use monochrome to question our relationship with technology. In 2016, Trevor Paglen created Autonomy Cube, a sculpture that broadcasts a free Wi-Fi network—but its surface is coated in a material that absorbs signals, making it invisible to thermal cameras. "Monochrome here is a way of saying: look at what you don’t see," he explained.

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What if monochrome were a form of freedom?

At its core, monochrome fascinates because it is both a constraint and a liberation. A single colour is a challenge: how to create depth, emotion, meaning with so little? "It’s like writing a novel with one word," said writer Jonathan Safran Foer. "Or composing a symphony with a single note."

For Malevich, the black square was a door to the infinite. For Klein, blue was a mystical experience. For Richter, grey was a mirror of the soul. And for us today, monochrome may be a way to slow down, to breathe, in a world saturated with images and colours.

So the next time you see a white wall, a black painting, or a screen in dark mode, ask yourself: what if this absence of colour were, in fact, an invitation to see the invisible?