Page 39 - Studio International - March 1974

questions of their position, size, and 'visual
balance' : some sort of composition. In 1959
Ryman used few elements in an orthogonal but
asymmetrical balance working from the corners
and edges of the support : a preconception not
irrelevant to his 'personal' solution to the
problem of composition in the etching(s) of
1972. But the etching process itself
contributed to the 1972 'composition' — even
to its basis on the exploration of line; for of all
the intaglio printing processes, etching is the
most conducive to free linearity. And Ryman
used its printing process as the very structure of
the interrelationship amongst the four parts of
this piece: the (numbered) first three etchings
were made by the impression of single plates,
each individually drawn and inked in a different
colour; the other part was made by the
superimposed printing of the first three, a
composite (and un-numbered) culmination of
both the printing process and imagery of its

`unfinished' predecessors. And what is most
awesome to me in this work is that the sequence
of 'imagery' amongst the four parts progresses
from most simple to most complex with an
evenness not contained in the technical
process, but achieved despite it. Thus we have
in the first plate the 'problem' of `random'-vs-
grid lines forming into a 'light' blue square
area balancing (by sheer scale) the square
impression left by the plate; in the second, a
smaller sharper brown square of hatched lines
laterally balancing regular parallel lines as well
as that square plate; in the third, even sharper
orangish-red lines do even more — they make
straight regular parallels, two square 'hatched'
areas in asymmetrical balance, and a crossing
of curved continuous and broken lines which (Top) Tracing paper collage with gouache and pencil, 1959
allude to their more representational potential. Etching of four parts 1972 10½ x 10½ in.
And from that stage of accumulative complexity, Each 11 x 11 in.
the composite of all the prints seems to add only Photo : Robert Mates and Katz
one further step: compositeness, which is, of (Above)
Untitled, 1965
course, what it is. Oh ! I do think four etchings
Oil on linen, 10 1/8 x 10 1/8 in.
is a beautiful piece ! And I think its beauty is Coll. Mr and Mrs H. Fischbach, New York
very much involved with that complex integrity
of individual parts and the whole : that taut
paradoxical structuring of the parameters of the
piece. In this, four etchings is closer to the
`Unfinished' 1970 paintings than to the suite of
seven aquatints and nine unique aquatints of
1972 which are so admirably particularly described
by Naomi Spector in Art and Project's bulletin 7o:
for although the beautiful aquatints share with
the etchings an imaginative use of the intaglio

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