Robert Ryman

Private Collection, London (acquired directly from the artist)
Phillips, New York, 13 November 2000, Lot 37
Private Collection, Miami (acquired from the above sale)
Sotheby's, New York, 13 May 2015, Lot 169
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Vittorio Colaizzi, Robert Ryman, London 2017, pp. 17 and 30, illustrated in color

This work is in very good condition overall. There is very light evidence of handling along the edges. The colors are bright, fresh and clean. There is some slight graying to the white pigment at the peaks of the impastoed areas, concurrent with the artist’s work from this period. A thin fiber of the unpainted canvas has come loose in the upper left corner. Under raking light, a slight undulation to the canvas is visible in some of the areas where the media has been applied the thickest. Under Ultraviolet light inspection, there is no evidence of restoration. Framed under Plexiglas.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

“There is an image, the image is the paint, the procedure, the brush, the way the painting is done – this is actually the image. The size of it, the thickness, the type of paint, all these things become image as soon as it is put on the wall: then it becomes an object, an image.”
Robert Ryman Robert Ryman’s Untitled is painterly expression at its most primal, trimming away the excesses of representation to craft painting as raw fact. Without the illusionistic tools of verisimilitude or an array of color, Untitled is reduced to the most basic elements of paint and support. This set of limitations enables Ryman to enact a process of pictorial experimentation resulting in a work that exceeds standard definitions of the medium.

In the present work, Ryman has split the traditional monochrome into two distinct regions, leaving hints of a dramatic crimson underlayer beneath the thickly applied white impasto. Separated by a field of raw canvas, these two passages are bordered by a graphite square which echoes the shape of the stretched canvas. Explaining his primary objective, Ryman stated, “It was a matter of making the surface very animated, giving it a lot of movement and activity. This was done not just with the brushwork and use of quite heavy paint, but with color which was subtly creeping through the white” (Robert Ryman quoted in David Batchelor, “On Paintings and Pictures: In Conversation with Robert Ryman,” Frieze, Issue 10, May 1993). Through these elements, Ryman makes the subject of the painting paint itself, exploring the medium’s inherent dynamism, materiality, and texture, as well as its relationship to the support. 

In the present work, paint is both content and form, and thus embodies the distillation of Ryman’s primary innovation in art history. Ryman’s artistic practice began when he moved to New York from Tennessee to become a Jazz saxophonist, working as a guard at the Museum of Modern Art to make ends meet. Ryman was exposed to the major works of Modern art that lined the walls of that institution and allowed time and space to analyze the components of painting to their most elemental degree. Not coincidentally, this period coincided with the solidification of Ryman’s style, characterized by the rejection of color, a process that narrowed his focus on the inherent qualities of paint, as articulated by Untitled.

In Untitled, the flashes of color which peak through the dense fields of white allude to the theatricality and drama of Abstract Expressionism, as does the paint application, yet the work exhibits little of the action so characteristic of de Kooning or Pollock. Instead, the white suppresses the drama of the red, smoldering with a repressed, yet still vital energy, literalizing Ryman’s suppression of color in his oeuvre. What Ryman relinquishes in the expressive potential of color, he gains in artistic freedom. Without color as a distraction, Ryman can initiate a greater exploration of the act of painting and its limits. Untitled exemplifies Ryman’s interrogation of how paintings are assembled, gain meaning, and come to fruition; in the present work, paint is applied with an expressionist swagger, whereas in others, it might be slathered without visible brushwork, allowing for wildly disparate results. Through his range of techniques, as well as his range of pigments, including oil, acrylic, casein, enamelac, gouache, and pastel, Ryman insists on the role of paint as the source of meaning. In the words of The New York Times’ Roberta Smith “Mr. Ryman's art reminds us that it is paint, scale and color that we look at first and last in all painting” (Roberta Smith, “Review/Art; Robert Ryman Derives Poetry from White on White,” The New York Times, 24 September 2003.)

 



This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being organized by David Gray under number 64.049.