Page 39 - Studio International - February 1974

(Right)
Eagle Turquoise 7H No. 4 1966
Graphite pencil on paper, 12 3/8 x 12 3/8 in.
Private collection, New York
(Below)
Installation view, corrugated cardboard paintings
Fischbach Gallery, New York, 1968

paper, cold-rolled steel, burnished aluminium, Take Classico V for example : it consists A very different sensuosity is obtained in the
copper, corrugated cardboard, stretch simply of the presence or absence of white corrugated cardboard paintings covered in
polystyrene fabric, wax-paper, tracing paper, polymer paint applied with even thinness on Enamelac: more down-to-earth, more openly
mylar and fibreglass sheets, and the wall. `classico' paper, and the presence or absence of porous, more digital in integrity. Of course the
That list sounds almost promiscuous in its these commercial paper sheets on a hardboard materials are more commercially common and
materialistic variety. Used by some 'artists', back. The placement of the sheets — as `artistically' less defined — and also more open
the result would be chaos. Artists before and closely contiguous as the natural edge- to direct and rapid facture. The cardboard's
after Ryman have used widely different irregularity of the handmade paper allows — thick-planed stiffness can be cut to any size
materials in work usually called 'collage' or creates a rectangular 'grid' of shadowed 'lines' (Ryman's always in 5-foot squares) requiring
`assemblage' (whether good or bad) and of their physical absence. With the chosen no further support or frame; Enamelac's
characterized by accentuated differences of twelve sheets (not nine as Ryman remembered extremely fast (alcohol based) drying properties
physical dimensions, image identity, and colour. after three years of not seeing these works) encourage thin washes rapidly brushed (here
It is not just that Ryman's materials can be their arrangement makes a 'square' : a square almost scrubbed) all over the surfaces if its
generally divided into 'paint', 'support' and which is echoed in the more personal parameters utilitarian character as a sealer-stainkiller is to
`frame' that leads one to see his works as of the white-painted field which, while off- bond each panel into a physical permanence
`paintings', for they still read as such when centre and covering different proportions of the equal to that of old-master oils. Over the panels'
they might technically be termed 'collage'. individual sheets, binds these sheets as a warmly tan surfaces — so much smoother than
This is because his choice of materials for whole set. And this large square of positive cloth — the extraordinarily matte washes of
individual works shows an austerity and sense paint-presence is re-echoed in the square Enamelac swirl with chalky cloudiness
of compatibility which subordinates the absences of paint around every four-corner disciplined by the double horizontal 'bands'
importance of their physical differences to the junction of papers — a residue of masking-tape (over-laps of Ryman's from-the-elbow-strokes
visual integrity of each whole. And removal of a different scale from that seen as pulled left to right) throughout the paintings of
throughout the whole of his oeuvre there is the `line 'along one side of each orthogonal within 3, 4, 5, and 7 square panels also aligned into
discipline of (how shall I call it ?) image- the painted square. A very complex work of close horizontality in his 1969 Fischbach
austerity : the almost constant use of white(s), very simple means — and finally 'there' through Gallery exhibition: vaporous delicacy given
square (sometimes circular) formats, and the simple distinction between the flat shine supportive discipline of both personal facture
`lines' regularized by internally consistent use of of the semi-gloss paint contrasting with the and geometric parameters.
one brush or disciplined into parallel repetition matte finish of the rag paper in an aesthetic Porous delicacy is certainly a characteristic
as orthogonals. elegance as much physical as mathematical. of Chemex coffee filter paper — the material for
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