People who follow this blog know of my admiration for Minimal Art and for me Minimal Art includes the work by Robert Ryman. I hesitated to start with this sentence because many believe Robert Ryman is not a Minimal painter but more of a painter who makes monochrome works of art. Still ,when searching on Google for Ryman he is by many categorized as “Minimal”.
Often allied with Minimalist, Conceptual Art, and Monochrome Painting, Robert Ryman has painted works in which theme and medium are one. A majority of his paintings feature only white or off-white paint on square canvases, varying in scale and texture and draw the eye toward the nature of the brush strokes and the depth of paint. To further heighten the effect of subtle variations in technique, Ryman manipulates how each work is hung on the wall, playing with the frames themselves as well as with each painting’s distance from the wall. For example, the eleven-panel Vector (1975/1997) comprises 11 wood units of the same size painted in white and hung equidistant from one another, the empty spaces on the walls between the panels echoing the nuanced texture and forms of the panels themselves. A great painter and one of the last from his generation of Minimal artists. www.ftn-books.com has some nice publications on Ryman available.
