拍品專文
This work will be listed as number 1961.109 in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being organized by David Gray.
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Property from a Prestigious Private Collection
ROBERT RYMAN (1930-2019)
Untitled
細節
ROBERT RYMAN (1930-2019)
Untitled
signed and dated 'Ryman 61' (lower right)
oil on unstretched linen
10 x 10 in. (25.4 x 25.4 cm.)
Painted in 1961.
Untitled
signed and dated 'Ryman 61' (lower right)
oil on unstretched linen
10 x 10 in. (25.4 x 25.4 cm.)
Painted in 1961.
來源
Sidney Janis Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1980
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1980
更多詳情
Painted in 1961, Robert Ryman’s Untitled is an exquisite, early example of the iconic ‘white’ paintings that are synonymous with his groundbreaking body of work. From a series of unstretched canvases measuring about ten inches square, Untitled belongs to the formative, early period in Ryman’s career, which saw him working to refine and hone his mature style. In the present example, thick impasto brushstrokes of gleaming white paint gather toward the painting’s center and feather outward to its periphery, where the edges of the unstretched linen support retain a beautiful, yet raw, quality. Touches of pale blue, yellow and pink offer a surprising and enjoyable reminder of Ryman’s flair for color, which together with the cloudy white passages, creates a flickering, energy-filled field. Having been in the same collection for nearly four-and-a-half decades, Untitled offers up a rare opportunity to appreciate anew the artist’s long-running and important contributions to the field of postwar art.
Untitled is characterized by an accumulation of active and lively white brushstrokes, which proliferate in a multi-layered and dense arrangement. Typical to this period, Ryman applied the brushstrokes in alternating directions. Some are rendered with a twist of the brush and others painted with a quick downward stroke. The color white predominates, and Ryman has explored it in various thicknesses and techniques. In the middle of the canvas, the white pigment has been heavily applied, so that the peaks and ridges of impasto shimmer in the ambient light. A dry brush has been used in the painting’s periphery, and here the effect is more matte, with areas of the warp and weft of the linen support showing through. Ryman has retained the raw edge of the linen support, whose scalloped edge provided a contrast to its otherwise strictly geometric square shape.
In Untitled, the textual interplay of several colors provides a powerful contrast to the otherwise pristine white field. Pale blue prevails, giving the effect of an overcast day, with passages of yellow and pink peeking through the passages of white paint. Some of Ryman’s paintings made in 1961 were done on his honeymoon with Lucy Lippard in Kennebec Point, Maine. In certain paintings of this era, there is the suggestion of a foggy landscape with passages of sunlight flickering through the clouds.
In the mid-to-late 1960s, Robert Ryman’s monochromatic white paintings sent shock waves through the art world, ushering in a new era of Minimalism. Ryman let his materials speak for themselves, and through his single-minded pursuit of the color white, he teased out an astonishing variety and subtleness from his limited range of materials. When asked in 1971 whether or not he made “white paintings,” Ryman replied no, saying: “I work with color all the time. I don’t think of myself as making white paintings. [...] White paint is my medium [but] there’s a lot of color involved” (R. Ryman, quoted in P. Tuchman, “An Interview with Robert Ryman,” Artforum, December 1971, p. 46).
It was during the early 1960s that Ryman established the terms by which his art would define itself for decades to come. Between 1961 and 1964, Ryman gradually eliminated all color except for white. He also established the square as his preferred format, embracing the natural color of the linen or cotton support, and typically leaving its edges unpainted, or—as in the case of Untitled—simply unstretched. Ryman had spent the past seven years working as a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1953-1960), where he communed daily with paintings by Henri Matisse, Mark Rothko and Franz Kline. He also became friends with fellow museum worker, Dan Flavin, a champion of Minimalism, as well as other artists with studios on the Bowery, including Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold and Eva Hesse, whose work was linked by their unconventional approach to convey conceptual ideas through art.
Those steady years of close looking endowed Ryman with a powerful, almost innate, understanding of color and its effects. And for Ryman, the color white was no exception, for he teased out a world of painterly variation from this one color alone, which the esteemed curator Naomi Spector has characterized thusly: “There are enormous numbers and kinds of white paints and many sizes, thicknesses, densities and surfaces possible with the square supports. Ryman continues to investigate them all. This is one of the areas which reveals his belief that far from being over, the history of painting is still young and capable of much more in the years to come” (N. Spector, “Robert Ryman at the Whitechapel,” in Robert Ryman, exh. cat., Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1977, p. 12).
Untitled is characterized by an accumulation of active and lively white brushstrokes, which proliferate in a multi-layered and dense arrangement. Typical to this period, Ryman applied the brushstrokes in alternating directions. Some are rendered with a twist of the brush and others painted with a quick downward stroke. The color white predominates, and Ryman has explored it in various thicknesses and techniques. In the middle of the canvas, the white pigment has been heavily applied, so that the peaks and ridges of impasto shimmer in the ambient light. A dry brush has been used in the painting’s periphery, and here the effect is more matte, with areas of the warp and weft of the linen support showing through. Ryman has retained the raw edge of the linen support, whose scalloped edge provided a contrast to its otherwise strictly geometric square shape.
In Untitled, the textual interplay of several colors provides a powerful contrast to the otherwise pristine white field. Pale blue prevails, giving the effect of an overcast day, with passages of yellow and pink peeking through the passages of white paint. Some of Ryman’s paintings made in 1961 were done on his honeymoon with Lucy Lippard in Kennebec Point, Maine. In certain paintings of this era, there is the suggestion of a foggy landscape with passages of sunlight flickering through the clouds.
In the mid-to-late 1960s, Robert Ryman’s monochromatic white paintings sent shock waves through the art world, ushering in a new era of Minimalism. Ryman let his materials speak for themselves, and through his single-minded pursuit of the color white, he teased out an astonishing variety and subtleness from his limited range of materials. When asked in 1971 whether or not he made “white paintings,” Ryman replied no, saying: “I work with color all the time. I don’t think of myself as making white paintings. [...] White paint is my medium [but] there’s a lot of color involved” (R. Ryman, quoted in P. Tuchman, “An Interview with Robert Ryman,” Artforum, December 1971, p. 46).
It was during the early 1960s that Ryman established the terms by which his art would define itself for decades to come. Between 1961 and 1964, Ryman gradually eliminated all color except for white. He also established the square as his preferred format, embracing the natural color of the linen or cotton support, and typically leaving its edges unpainted, or—as in the case of Untitled—simply unstretched. Ryman had spent the past seven years working as a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1953-1960), where he communed daily with paintings by Henri Matisse, Mark Rothko and Franz Kline. He also became friends with fellow museum worker, Dan Flavin, a champion of Minimalism, as well as other artists with studios on the Bowery, including Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold and Eva Hesse, whose work was linked by their unconventional approach to convey conceptual ideas through art.
Those steady years of close looking endowed Ryman with a powerful, almost innate, understanding of color and its effects. And for Ryman, the color white was no exception, for he teased out a world of painterly variation from this one color alone, which the esteemed curator Naomi Spector has characterized thusly: “There are enormous numbers and kinds of white paints and many sizes, thicknesses, densities and surfaces possible with the square supports. Ryman continues to investigate them all. This is one of the areas which reveals his belief that far from being over, the history of painting is still young and capable of much more in the years to come” (N. Spector, “Robert Ryman at the Whitechapel,” in Robert Ryman, exh. cat., Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1977, p. 12).
榮譽呈獻
Emily Kaplan
Senior Vice President, Senior Specialist, Co-Head of 20th Century Evening Sale