"It is important that painting always be new for me."
—Robert Ryman, 2004

 

 

In 2004, Robert Ryman shockingly declared that he had painted his first “white paintings.” This came as a surprise to most, as the artist had been known to paint in almost exclusively white pigments for the prior five decades. Upon further explanation, Ryman clarified that his previous paintings were executed in the most neutral palette he could envision, which just so happened to be white. His paintings from 2004, as the present example, marked his deliberate choice of white as his very subject matter.

 

 

 

Series #25 (White) belongs to a discreet body of 33 square “white paintings” executed between 2003-2005, marked by their distinctive titling Series # (White). The series is further differentiated from the artist’s earlier work by the dark primed surface, to which white paint was systematically applied in four different “shades” of the color. In the present work, Ryman applied a thinner, atmospheric wash of white paint to the left of the composition, inviting the darker ground to seductively peek through the surface. At center, a mass of explosive brushwork ranging from opaque to slightly translucent extends across the canvas, engendering an amorphous form that bursts from the canvas. Here, the artist works the paint deeply into the ground, revealing the push and pull of his brush that at once suggests spatial recession and chromatic illumination. The sharp contrast between dark and light causes a sensorial reverberation across the canvas that pulsates with energy before the viewer’s eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

With the “white paintings,” Ryman situates himself amongst a lineage of artists who have pushed the boundaries of painterly limits in black-and-white. Ryman’s Series #25 (White) particularly recalls Franz Kline’s Painting No. 7, 1952 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, which fuses gestural velocity with structural elegance to energize the most elementary of chromatic parings. His “white paintings” further echo Yayoi Kusama’s famed Infinity Nets series, which too reveal an obsession with color, repetition, and form.

 

 

 

 

 

By declaring the color white as the subject of his painting, Ryman invites viewers to contemplate whether Series #25 (White) is abstract or figurative. The white form which hovers above the dark ground is both purely illusionistic and perhaps allegoric of things seen in reality. Occupying the liminal space between the abstract and referential, Ryman’s Series #25 (White) embodies the new era in the artist’s oeuvre that drew from his past and simultaneously launched him on a novel path.