Robert Ryman·reduction and emotion

A white monochrome is often assumed to belong to a tendency in modernism that, through a process of elimination, strives to reveal the essential characteristics of a medium in order to arrive at a notion of that mediumËs "pure form;" or it is thought to represent what remains after painting has refined itself almost to the point of nonexistence, becoming the embodiment of an idea about art. In his work, Robert Ryman pursues neither purity nor minimal paintingËs logical extreme. Rather, he reduces visual information and reference in order to isolate and examine the fundamental physical attributes of painting. In the process, he foregrounds, and makes pictorial, elements not usually considered intrinsic to the visual experience of art: the artistËs signature, the workËs title, its support, its hanging devices, even its interaction with the space around it.

Ryman limits his palette to white because it is recessive enough to allow paintingËs other physical properties a voice and it makes his exploration of paint and paint handling more evident than darker, brighter colors or multi-hued compositions would. He also uses white to examine the very nature of color. Usually equated with the blank canvas and read as absence, in RymanËs hands white is endlessly varied and very much present. It is smooth and slick; soft and subtle; dry and chalky; cool like cream cheese or warm like heavy cream. In works from the late fifties and early sixties, colorful underpainting and printed matter are visible beneath the surfaces. Later, supports made of different metals or fiberglass and hanging devices in plastic, metal, tape, or wood lend subtle color to the paintings. At different points, RymanËs signature appears in ocher paint or graphite. The large Surface veils of 1970“71 have blue chalk borders. In fact, the percentage of true monochromes in RymanËs oeuvre is not great. Most of his works are "almost monochromes."

In 1971, one review identified Ryman as "the last functional member of the third generation of Abstract Expressionism"1 while another claimed that his works seemed "to make more sense of the idea of [seriality] than almost anyone elseËs do."2 These appraisals situate RymanËs project between two generations of U.S. artists. First and foremost, he is a painter who owes a debt to the New York school. However, he is also a member of the generation of conceptualists and postminimalists with which he emerged. Like them, he creates within the limitations of a specific, preestablished set of guidelines that emphasizes the process of art-making, often using the strategies of modularity and repetition.

Ryman is unique in reconciling a profound commitment to painting with systemic procedures commonly associated with minimal and conceptual art. Always analytical, by his own admission, he is also romantic and, in this, he aligns himself with Mark Rothko: "RothkoËs work might have a similarity with mine in the sense they may both be kind of romantic [. . .] I mean in the sense that Rothko is not a mathematician, his work has very much to do with feeling, with sensitivity."3 As with RothkoËs pared-down canvases, meaning lies in the sheer beauty of RymanËs deeply sensual white paintings. They are simultaneously emotive and reductive.




1. Willis Domingo, "Robert Ryman," Arts magazine (March 1971), p.17. Quoted in Lynn Zelevansky, "Chronology," Robert Ryman,

London: Tate Gallery, 1993, p.217“18.


2. Kenneth Baker, "Ryman at Fischbach," Artforum (April 1971), p.79. Quote from Zelevansky, p.218.


3. Quoted in Robert Storr, "Simple gifts," Robert Ryman, London: Tate Gallery, 1993, p.39.

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