Taking off from Hegel’s invocation of philosophy as a painting of ‘grey on grey’, this collection of essays explores the rich scope of possibilities implicated by the colour and concept of grey. Crossing art history, visual studies, philosophy, anthropology and literary studies, contributions attest to the repetitious insistence of grey on grey in rethinking the ontology of artworks and images; concepts of time, technique and medium; and how its immanent logic of self-differing summons forth deadlocks and blind spots, both past and present.