Robert Ryman
Encyclopedia
Robert Ryman is an American
painter identified with the movements of monochrome painting
, minimalism
, and conceptual art
. He is best known for abstract, white-on-white paintings. He lives and works in New York.
. After studying at the Tennessee Polytechnical Institute, Cookeville, between 1948 and 1949, and at the George Peabody College for Teachers between 1949 and 1950, Ryman enlisted in the United States army reserve corps and was assigned to an army reserve band during the Korean War. Ryman moved to New York City
in 1953, intending to become a professional jazz saxophonist. He soon took a day job at the Museum of Modern Art
as a security guard to make ends meet, and met the artists Sol LeWitt
and Dan Flavin
, who were co-workers with him at MoMA. He also met artist Roy Lichtenstein
during this period of the 1950s.
Captivated by the newly acquired abstract expressionist works of Mark Rothko
, Willem de Kooning
, Clyfford Still
, Jackson Pollock
and Barnett Newman
, Ryman became curious about the act of painting. He purchased some art supplies at local store and began experimenting in his apartment in 1955. That year, Ryman finished what he considers his earliest professional work, a largely monochrome painting titled Untitled (Orange Painting) (1955–59).
Ryman had a close relationship with the late conservator Orrin Riley, who would frequently give him advice on archival materials, many times testing the acidity of media the artist was interested in using. He has been interviewed by the television writer and producer Barbaralee Diamonstein twice. Once for the book and video production "Inside New York's Art World" in 1979 and again for "Inside the Art World" in 1993.
In 1961 the artist married art historian Lucy Lippard. They had a son together, Ethan Ryman, in 1964, who was a sound engineer and recently began making art. This marriage ended in divorce. He later married artist Merrill Wagner. Robert Ryman's sons, Cordy Ryman
and Will Ryman
are also artists and currently work in New York City
.
, steel, aluminum, plexiglas, lumasite, vinyl
, fiberglass, corrugated paper, burlap
, newsprint, wallpaper, jute
sacking, fiberplate, a composite material called gator board, feather board, handmade paper, and acrilivin. He has used painted and/or drawn with oil, acrylic, encaustic, Lascaux acrylic, casein
, enamel, pastel, oil pastel, graphite
, guache, and enamelac. Ryman has also experimented with printmaking, creating etchings, aquatint
s, lithographs, and silkscreens. His most famous quote is "There is never any question of what to paint only how to paint."
By the time Ryman began working, older artists like Barnett Newman
, Mark Rothko
, and Philip Guston
had already reduced painting to its essences. In 1955 Ryman began what he considers his earliest professional work, a largely monochrome painting titled Orange Painting (1955–59). In the late 1960s he created his Classico series of compositions consisting of multi-panel paintings on a specific type of paper called Classico. For each work in the series, Ryman attached a configuration of heavy, creamy white sheets of the paper to a wall with masking tape, painted the sheets with a shiny white acrylic paint, removed the tape when the sheets were dry, mounted them on foamcore, and reattached them to the wall. The built-up paint edge tracing the outline of masking tape and the ripped paper left behind give witness to the process of creation. The various works in the Classico series differ in the organization of paper sheets, the configuration of tape traces, and the painted shape. Just as the Classico works were titled after the type of paper used as a medium, the so-called Surface Veil works from 1970 were named for the brand of fiberglass upon which the smaller pieces in this group were painted. Some of the 12-foot square paintings from the series were executed not on fiber-glass but on cotton or linen. In each of these works the pigment appears to form a membrane over the support due to the differing degrees of opacity and translucence in the white paint juxtaposed with areas where less of it has been applied, leaving the fabric exposed. These disruptions in the painting’s skin often mark the literal pauses between the artist’s working sessions.
From 1975 until the late 1990s, Ryman affixed his paintings to the wall with metal brackets. He would design each set of brackets specifically for each piece and have them constructed by a local metals fabricator.
In 2009 he participated in the art project Find Me, by Gema Alava
, in company of artists Lawrence Weiner
, Merrill Wagner and Paul Kos.
He has stated that his paintings' titles are meaningless, and that they only exist as a form of identification. Ryman actually prefers the term of "name" for a painting instead of a title because he is not creating a picture or making reference to anything except the paint and the materials. The "names" of paintings often come from the names of art supplies, companies, or are just general words that do not carry much connotation.
. His first one man show at a museum was in 1972 at the Guggenheim Museum
in New York City, displaying thirty-eight of Ryman’s works from 1965 to 1972. Ryman's works were represented in documenta
s 5 (1972), 6 (1977), and 7 (1982), in Kassel, in the Venice Biennale
(1976, 1978, 1980), and in the Whitney Biennial
(1977, 1987, 1995). His first retrospective was organized by the Stedelijk Museum
, Amsterdam, in 1974. In 1992, a major touring retrospective of Ryman's paintings was mounted by the Museum of Modern Art
and the Tate Gallery
, including venues such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia
in Madrid, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
and the Walker Art Center
in Minneapolis.
Robert Ryman is represented by Pace Gallery
in New York, and Xavier Hufkens in Brussels.
, a contemporary art
museum in Schaffhausen
, Switzerland
has the largest public collection of Ryman's work, permanently exhibiting 29 pieces created from 1959 to 2007. In 2010 Ryman undertook a major reinstallation of his galleries at Hallen für Neue Kunst. Returning to the museum in 2008 — for the first time in 12 years — to revisit the permanent exhibition of his work that was first installed in 1983, he decided to transform the galleries into a “gesamtkunstwerk” — a synthesis, or total experience, composed of 30 paintings from 50 years of work. Other major museums collecting his works include the Museum of Modern Art
, New York, and the Tate
, London.
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
painter identified with the movements of monochrome painting
Monochrome painting
Monochromatic painting has been an important component of avant-garde visual art throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century. Painters have created the exploration of one color, the examination of values changing across a surface, the expressivity of texture and nuance, expressing a wide...
, minimalism
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
, and conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
. He is best known for abstract, white-on-white paintings. He lives and works in New York.
Early life and career
Ryman was born in Nashville, TennesseeNashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
. After studying at the Tennessee Polytechnical Institute, Cookeville, between 1948 and 1949, and at the George Peabody College for Teachers between 1949 and 1950, Ryman enlisted in the United States army reserve corps and was assigned to an army reserve band during the Korean War. Ryman moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1953, intending to become a professional jazz saxophonist. He soon took a day job at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
as a security guard to make ends meet, and met the artists Sol LeWitt
Sol LeWitt
Solomon "Sol" LeWitt was an American artist linked to various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism....
and Dan Flavin
Dan Flavin
Dan Flavin was an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures.-Early life and career:...
, who were co-workers with him at MoMA. He also met artist Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement...
during this period of the 1950s.
Captivated by the newly acquired abstract expressionist works of Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz , was a Russian-born American painter. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted classification as an "abstract painter".- Childhood :Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Province, Russian...
, Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....
, Clyfford Still
Clyfford Still
Clyfford Still was an American painter, and one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism.-Biography:...
, Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
and Barnett Newman
Barnett Newman
Barnett Newman was an American artist. He is seen as one of the major figures in abstract expressionism and one of the foremost of the color field painters.-Early life:...
, Ryman became curious about the act of painting. He purchased some art supplies at local store and began experimenting in his apartment in 1955. That year, Ryman finished what he considers his earliest professional work, a largely monochrome painting titled Untitled (Orange Painting) (1955–59).
Ryman had a close relationship with the late conservator Orrin Riley, who would frequently give him advice on archival materials, many times testing the acidity of media the artist was interested in using. He has been interviewed by the television writer and producer Barbaralee Diamonstein twice. Once for the book and video production "Inside New York's Art World" in 1979 and again for "Inside the Art World" in 1993.
In 1961 the artist married art historian Lucy Lippard. They had a son together, Ethan Ryman, in 1964, who was a sound engineer and recently began making art. This marriage ended in divorce. He later married artist Merrill Wagner. Robert Ryman's sons, Cordy Ryman
Cordy Ryman
Cordy Ryman , an artist based in New York City. Ryman earned his BFA with Honors in Fine Arts and Art Education from The School of Visual Arts in New York in 1997.-Works:...
and Will Ryman
Will Ryman
Will Ryman is an artist who creates figurative art, including larger than life urban sculptures that range from 4 to 20 feet tall. Ryman’s work has been featured at: P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Marlborough Gallery, Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert Inc., The Saatchi Gallery, Galerie Bernd Kluser,...
are also artists and currently work in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
Work
Ryman is often classified as a minimalist, but he prefers to be known as a "realist" because he is not interested in creating illusions, but only in presenting the materials he has used in compositions at their face value. The majority of his works feature abstract expressionist-influenced brushwork in white or off-white paint on square canvas or metal surfaces. A lifelong experimenter with media, Ryman has painted and/or drawn on canvas, linenLinen
Linen is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant, Linum usitatissimum. Linen is labor-intensive to manufacture, but when it is made into garments, it is valued for its exceptional coolness and freshness in hot weather....
, steel, aluminum, plexiglas, lumasite, vinyl
Vinyl
A vinyl compound is any organic compound that contains a vinyl group ,which are derivatives of ethene, CH2=CH2, with one hydrogen atom replaced with some other group...
, fiberglass, corrugated paper, burlap
Burlap
Hessian , or burlap in the US, is a woven fabric usually made from skin of the jute plant or sisal fibres, or may be combined with other vegetable fibres to make rope, nets, and similar products...
, newsprint, wallpaper, jute
Jute
Jute is a long, soft, shiny vegetable fibre that can be spun into coarse, strong threads. It is produced from plants in the genus Corchorus, which has been classified in the family Tiliaceae, or more recently in Malvaceae....
sacking, fiberplate, a composite material called gator board, feather board, handmade paper, and acrilivin. He has used painted and/or drawn with oil, acrylic, encaustic, Lascaux acrylic, casein
Casein
Casein is the name for a family of related phosphoprotein proteins . These proteins are commonly found in mammalian milk, making up 80% of the proteins in cow milk and between 60% and 65% of the proteins in human milk....
, enamel, pastel, oil pastel, graphite
Graphite
The mineral graphite is one of the allotropes of carbon. It was named by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1789 from the Ancient Greek γράφω , "to draw/write", for its use in pencils, where it is commonly called lead . Unlike diamond , graphite is an electrical conductor, a semimetal...
, guache, and enamelac. Ryman has also experimented with printmaking, creating etchings, aquatint
Aquatint
Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching.Intaglio printmaking makes marks on the matrix that are capable of holding ink. The inked plate is passed through a printing press together with a sheet of paper, resulting in a transfer of the ink to the paper...
s, lithographs, and silkscreens. His most famous quote is "There is never any question of what to paint only how to paint."
By the time Ryman began working, older artists like Barnett Newman
Barnett Newman
Barnett Newman was an American artist. He is seen as one of the major figures in abstract expressionism and one of the foremost of the color field painters.-Early life:...
, Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz , was a Russian-born American painter. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted classification as an "abstract painter".- Childhood :Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Province, Russian...
, and Philip Guston
Philip Guston
Philip Guston was a notable painter and printmaker in the New York School, which included many of the Abstract expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning...
had already reduced painting to its essences. In 1955 Ryman began what he considers his earliest professional work, a largely monochrome painting titled Orange Painting (1955–59). In the late 1960s he created his Classico series of compositions consisting of multi-panel paintings on a specific type of paper called Classico. For each work in the series, Ryman attached a configuration of heavy, creamy white sheets of the paper to a wall with masking tape, painted the sheets with a shiny white acrylic paint, removed the tape when the sheets were dry, mounted them on foamcore, and reattached them to the wall. The built-up paint edge tracing the outline of masking tape and the ripped paper left behind give witness to the process of creation. The various works in the Classico series differ in the organization of paper sheets, the configuration of tape traces, and the painted shape. Just as the Classico works were titled after the type of paper used as a medium, the so-called Surface Veil works from 1970 were named for the brand of fiberglass upon which the smaller pieces in this group were painted. Some of the 12-foot square paintings from the series were executed not on fiber-glass but on cotton or linen. In each of these works the pigment appears to form a membrane over the support due to the differing degrees of opacity and translucence in the white paint juxtaposed with areas where less of it has been applied, leaving the fabric exposed. These disruptions in the painting’s skin often mark the literal pauses between the artist’s working sessions.
From 1975 until the late 1990s, Ryman affixed his paintings to the wall with metal brackets. He would design each set of brackets specifically for each piece and have them constructed by a local metals fabricator.
In 2009 he participated in the art project Find Me, by Gema Alava
Gema Alava
Gema Alava is an artist who lives and works in New York City. Her work, in the form of installation, drawing, photography and art projects, deals with what she calls "contradictory truths", and the capacity to "create a maximum by reversing a minimum." She has received a M.F.A. from the San...
, in company of artists Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Weiner was a central figure in the formation of conceptual art in the 1960s His work often takes the form of typographic texts.- Life and career :...
, Merrill Wagner and Paul Kos.
He has stated that his paintings' titles are meaningless, and that they only exist as a form of identification. Ryman actually prefers the term of "name" for a painting instead of a title because he is not creating a picture or making reference to anything except the paint and the materials. The "names" of paintings often come from the names of art supplies, companies, or are just general words that do not carry much connotation.
Exhibitions
Ryman had his first one man show at Paul Bianchini's gallery, New York, in 1967 at the age of 36; his first show in Europe came the following year at the Galerie Heiner Friedrich, Munich. One years later, Ryman was included in When Attitudes Become Form, a seminal exhibition of works by Minimalist and Conceptual artists organized by the Kunsthalle BernKunsthalle Bern
The Kunsthalle Bern is a Kunsthalle on the Helvetiaplatz in Berne, Switzerland.It was built in 1917–1918 by the Kunsthalle Bern Association and opened on October 5, 1918. Since then, it has been the site of numerous expositions of contemporary art...
. His first one man show at a museum was in 1972 at the Guggenheim Museum
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
in New York City, displaying thirty-eight of Ryman’s works from 1965 to 1972. Ryman's works were represented in documenta
Documenta
documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
s 5 (1972), 6 (1977), and 7 (1982), in Kassel, in the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
(1976, 1978, 1980), and in the Whitney Biennial
Whitney Biennial
The Whitney Biennial is a biennale exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, USA. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932, the first biennial was in 1973...
(1977, 1987, 1995). His first retrospective was organized by the Stedelijk Museum
Stedelijk Museum
Founded in 1874, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is a museum for classic modern and contemporary art in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It has been housed on the Paulus Potterstraat, next to Museum Square Museumplein and to the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum and the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam Zuid...
, Amsterdam, in 1974. In 1992, a major touring retrospective of Ryman's paintings was mounted by the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
and the Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
, including venues such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía is the official name of Spain's national museum of 20th century art . The museum was officially inaugurated on September 10, 1992 and is named for Queen Sofia of Spain...
in Madrid, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...
and the Walker Art Center
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
in Minneapolis.
Robert Ryman is represented by Pace Gallery
Pace Gallery
The Pace Gallery is a New York City-based exhibition space. It was founded in 1960 in Boston by Arne Glimcher.-PaceWildenstein:From 1993 until April 1, 2010, the gallery became "PaceWildenstein," a joint business venture between the Pace Gallery and Wildenstein & Co....
in New York, and Xavier Hufkens in Brussels.
Collections
The Hallen für Neue KunstHallen für Neue Kunst
The Hallen für Neue Kunst is a museum for contemporary art, especially New Art . It is located in the Swiss city of Schaffhausen, right on the banks of the river Rhine. The Hallen was founded and established in 1982/83 by the artist Urs Raussmüller...
, a contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
museum in Schaffhausen
Schaffhausen
Schaffhausen is a city in northern Switzerland and the capital of the canton of the same name; it has an estimated population of 34,587 ....
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
has the largest public collection of Ryman's work, permanently exhibiting 29 pieces created from 1959 to 2007. In 2010 Ryman undertook a major reinstallation of his galleries at Hallen für Neue Kunst. Returning to the museum in 2008 — for the first time in 12 years — to revisit the permanent exhibition of his work that was first installed in 1983, he decided to transform the galleries into a “gesamtkunstwerk” — a synthesis, or total experience, composed of 30 paintings from 50 years of work. Other major museums collecting his works include the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, New York, and the Tate
Tate
-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
, London.
Recognition
A recipient of numerous honors, Ryman has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Scholarship (1974), the Skowhegan Medal from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1985). Ryman has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1994, and assumed the role of the organization’s Vice President in 2003. In 2005, Ryman was awarded the Praemium ImperialePraemium Imperiale
The Praemium Imperiale is an arts prize awarded since 1989 by the imperial family of Japan on behalf of the Japan Art Association in the fields painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and theatre/film...
.
External links
- The Pace Gallery
- Biography, interviews, essays, artwork images and video clips from PBSPublic Broadcasting ServiceThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
series Art:21 -- Art in the Twenty-First Century - Season 4 (2007). - Robert Ryman - the Guggenheim Museum
- Robert Ryman at Xavier HufkensXavier HufkensXavier Hufkens is a European gallery owner and dealer in contemporary art. Since its founding in 1987, his gallery has been committed to the long term representation of established, mid-career and emerging artists. The gallery deals in a combination of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography,...
, Brussels