Robert Ryman review – can your brain handle a show that only has white paintings?
Barbican Art Gallery, London What seem at first indistinguishable canvases offer challenges, revelations and transcendental effects – but only if you can give yourself over to them Writing about painting is a futile exercise at the best of times. This is especially the case when, as with Robert Ryman, the paintings in question are variations on the theme of white. If that sounds pretentious – or like a tired joke –…
Key points
- A Robert Ryman exhibition titled The Real Thing opens at Barbican Art Gallery in London from 8 October to 28 February.
- The show features paintings that are variations on white, made with white paint on flat surfaces with wall fixtures.
- The reviewer says the work avoids grand theories and chases an indefinable "wellbeing and rightness", but feels the controlled space is an escape from reality.
A new exhibition of Robert Ryman's paintings, titled The Real Thing, opens at Barbican Art Gallery in London from 8 October to 28 February. The Guardian's review notes that the show consists of variations on the theme of white.
The review describes the paintings as white paint on flat surfaces with wall fixtures. It says they are not trying to tell viewers a story and do not require familiarity with abstruse theories, leaving just the viewer and the materials, how the paint lies and how it scatters the light.
What the paintings show
The review highlights The Painting of the Mysterious Shadow from the mid-60s, made after Ryman left his job as a guard at MoMA and gave up a career as a jazz musician. It describes six thick white stripes running horizontally across the canvas, as close as possible without overlapping, with the fabric stretched over a deep wooden frame so its surface sits about three inches off the wall and casts a thin shadow.
It also mentions the scuffed white cloud in Concert, an untitled 1958 work in bilious yellow-white, the lavender-tinted Surface Veil II, and the 13-part suite Standard installed as an immersive environment.
wellbeing and rightness
— the Guardian reviewer
The reviewer's response
The review says Ryman was not interested in justifying his paintings by grandiose theories. Instead, it states, he chased an indefinable "wellbeing and rightness" that might be understood as a harmonious arrangement of homogenous elements.
Because the unframed paintings bleed into the white walls, the review says this rightness becomes a function of the architectural environment. It adds that the reviewer came to feel trapped in the controlled space, and that in the present historical moment the show feels more like an escape from reality than a confrontation with it.
