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Lot Essay
This work will be listed as catalogue number 61.0894 in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné project being organized by David Gray.
Robert Ryman's vigorous and evocative work belongs to a series of intimately-scaled, canvases that he painted between 1958 and 1962. A crucial, fertile period, this era was marked by an exceptional freedom of handling and a certain painterly exuberance, in which Ryman developed the rigorous tenets of a mature style that would consume him for the next five decades. In this early era, Ryman produced a series of small, brilliant works of white pigment upon bare, unstretched canvas, in which the surrounding edges were left untouched and often reveal the selvedge edge of plain linen. True to this era, this particular painting displays a soft wash of white that has been thinned down so as to appear nearly translucent in some areas, rendered with a confident, expressive touch that feels at once strong and subtle. The edges of this interior cloud-like form are scumbled in a bold manner that directly contrasts the bareness of the raw canvas. Within this intimate work, Ryman's highly restricted process is laid bare, in the application of white paint upon a square canvas, so that the artist's poignant gesture and expressive mark-making become the subject of the painting itself.
During this formative period, Ryman sometimes innovated with color, but found himself continually "painting out" the different hues with white, and eventually decided upon white as the only effective way to allow the inherent physical qualities of the paint-texture, density, light and reflectivity--to speak for themselves. Truly, Ryman demonstrates the different qualities of the color white, from the soft, nebulous form that dominates the central register of the painting, to the thick, opaque rectangular form at the painting's upper edge. Near the periphery of the canvas, one can even delineate the gesso that Ryman used, which itself reads as yet another nuanced layer, so that the "white" of Ryman's painting is in fact a plurality of whites, their tonalities resulting from a range of pigments, mediums, surfaces and techniques. Typical to this era, Ryman incorporates the raw, unprimed areas of the bare linen canvas as a means to highlight and frame the gestural abstraction of the painted interior. Rather than stretching the linen upon a canvas frame, Ryman leaves the material untouched, as evidence of his painterly process. The work's irregular, scalloped edges retain a suggestion of the artist's working method of tacking the canvas to the wall for support; stray threads are visible along the edge of the fabric, as critic Naomi Spector writes, "Everything visible counts with Ryman and everything about a work has been made to count visually" (N. Spector, "Robert Ryman at the Whitechapel," Robert Ryman, exh. cat., Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1977, p. 12).
An element that recurs during this era is the artist's expressive use of his signature. In this work, Ryman repeats the signature 'RRYMAN 61' five times along the painting's left-hand register. Several other works from this period display a similar treatment of the signature, in which Ryman plays with the formal qualities of the word. In the present work, the topmost line of text is almost entirely subsumed by the white expanse of pigment in the painting's interior, while along the lower register, the letters are more clearly delineated and stand apart from the ground upon which they are depicted.
Robert Ryman's vigorous and evocative work belongs to a series of intimately-scaled, canvases that he painted between 1958 and 1962. A crucial, fertile period, this era was marked by an exceptional freedom of handling and a certain painterly exuberance, in which Ryman developed the rigorous tenets of a mature style that would consume him for the next five decades. In this early era, Ryman produced a series of small, brilliant works of white pigment upon bare, unstretched canvas, in which the surrounding edges were left untouched and often reveal the selvedge edge of plain linen. True to this era, this particular painting displays a soft wash of white that has been thinned down so as to appear nearly translucent in some areas, rendered with a confident, expressive touch that feels at once strong and subtle. The edges of this interior cloud-like form are scumbled in a bold manner that directly contrasts the bareness of the raw canvas. Within this intimate work, Ryman's highly restricted process is laid bare, in the application of white paint upon a square canvas, so that the artist's poignant gesture and expressive mark-making become the subject of the painting itself.
During this formative period, Ryman sometimes innovated with color, but found himself continually "painting out" the different hues with white, and eventually decided upon white as the only effective way to allow the inherent physical qualities of the paint-texture, density, light and reflectivity--to speak for themselves. Truly, Ryman demonstrates the different qualities of the color white, from the soft, nebulous form that dominates the central register of the painting, to the thick, opaque rectangular form at the painting's upper edge. Near the periphery of the canvas, one can even delineate the gesso that Ryman used, which itself reads as yet another nuanced layer, so that the "white" of Ryman's painting is in fact a plurality of whites, their tonalities resulting from a range of pigments, mediums, surfaces and techniques. Typical to this era, Ryman incorporates the raw, unprimed areas of the bare linen canvas as a means to highlight and frame the gestural abstraction of the painted interior. Rather than stretching the linen upon a canvas frame, Ryman leaves the material untouched, as evidence of his painterly process. The work's irregular, scalloped edges retain a suggestion of the artist's working method of tacking the canvas to the wall for support; stray threads are visible along the edge of the fabric, as critic Naomi Spector writes, "Everything visible counts with Ryman and everything about a work has been made to count visually" (N. Spector, "Robert Ryman at the Whitechapel," Robert Ryman, exh. cat., Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1977, p. 12).
An element that recurs during this era is the artist's expressive use of his signature. In this work, Ryman repeats the signature 'RRYMAN 61' five times along the painting's left-hand register. Several other works from this period display a similar treatment of the signature, in which Ryman plays with the formal qualities of the word. In the present work, the topmost line of text is almost entirely subsumed by the white expanse of pigment in the painting's interior, while along the lower register, the letters are more clearly delineated and stand apart from the ground upon which they are depicted.