All or Nothing featured works from Crystal Bridges’ permanent collection, dating from 1860 to today, that play on the different concepts of these colors. The works utilized black and white in a variety of media to focus on elements such as process, composition, and spatial relationships. The limited color palette also eliminates our emotional associations with color, drawing our attention to the creative and technical processes and meaningful details in the narrative of the works.

Artmaking often begins in the simplest way: a black mark on a white sheet of paper or canvas. The reason we view black and white as clashing forces is that while these colors are true opposites of one another, they both can also be used as symbols for all or nothing.