Robert Ryman Quotes on Art

Robert Ryman was a famous American abstract, minimalist and conceptual artist. He is best known for his white on white square abstract paintings. Famous Robert Ryman paintings include “Record”, “Rule”, “First Conversion”, “Classico 5”, “Surface Veil”, “Conversion”, “Points” and many important works were “Untitled”.

Mini biography: Born Robert Ryman on the 30th of May, 1930 in Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America. Ryman married the art critic Lucy Rowland Lippard in 1960 and they divorced in 1966. They had one child: Ethan Ryman. He married his second wife Merrill Wagner in 1969 and they had two children together: Cordy Ryman and Will Ryman. The artist died on the 8th of February, 2019 in Manhattan, New York City, USA at the age of 88.

List of Famous Robert Ryman Art Quotes

White has a tendency to make things visible. With white, you can see more of a nuance; you can see more. I’ve said before that, if you spill coffee on a white shirt, you can see the coffee very clearly. If you spill it on a dark shirt, you don’t see it as well. Robert Ryman

When I begin, I’m never quite sure what the result is going to be. The process is actually making the painting, that’s all. I don’t have a plan beforehand. Robert Ryman

I don’t really title them unless they go out of my studio into the world. No one was interested in the early paintings, so they never went anywhere. I never titled them. Robert Ryman

There’s no symbolism or story that I need to tell or some kind of political project that I might want to do. I’m not limited by any of that. I don’t have any of those things to stop me from experimenting and going forward. Robert Ryman

If you have an equal-sided space and you’re going to put paint on it and do something with it, then it seems like the most perfect space. I don’t have to get involved with spatial composition, as with rectangles and circles or whatever. Robert Ryman

I don’t abstract from anything. I am involved with real space, the room itself, real light, and real surface. Robert Ryman

One little painting might take six months or more, not that I’m working on it all the time, but it’s just around and, when I see it, it tells me what it needs and then I work on it. Robert Ryman

The square has always just been an equal-sided space that I could work with. Somehow it’s become so natural to me that I just don’t think of it any other way. Robert Ryman

I don’t think of myself as making white paintings. I make paintings; I’m a painter. White paint is my medium. There’s a lot of color involved. I don’t mean color like red, green, and yellow; but, color, in that sense. Robert Ryman

If I look at some white panels in my studio, I see the white—but I am not conscious of them being white. They react with the wood, the color, the light, and with the wall itself. They become something other than just the color white. Robert Ryman

The way I work the painting is either finished or it’s destroyed. It’s a one-time thing. It has to be very direct; it has to be immediate, to the point. There can’t be any overpainting. Robert Ryman

Robert Ryman Abstract Painting

More on American Abstract Artist Robert Ryman

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