Exceptional Works: Robert Ryman

Widely celebrated for his tactile monochromatic works, from the outset Ryman gave precedence to the physical gesture of applying paint to a support. As Suzanne Hudson writes, “Unlike so many of his peers, he never passed through a landscape phase, tried for the human figure, or abstracted from objects.” 
 
Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Ryman moved to New York in 1953 to pursue a career as a jazz musician. The same year, he took a job as a security guard at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. His time working at the museum in part inspired Ryman to devote his life to painting, with which he began experimenting in 1954.

While unique in terms of scale, Untitled relates to paintings made in 1962 that demonstrate denser, more static facture.  
 
Expanding across a square field of more than six feet, the forms in the present work have a new rhythmic quality; like syncopation—a musical term that describes a variety of rhythms played together to make a piece of music—the flashes of color create unexpected visual incidents that further enliven the surface.

In 1952, Ryman, who had long been fascinated by jazz and studied the saxophone at college, began studying with Lennie Tristano. A blind pianist, Tristano played a central role in the New York jazz scene of the 1940s and 1950s. 
 
As a teacher, Tristano was notable for his systematic breakdown of the elements of improvisation. While some criticized what they saw as an over-intellectual approach to an intuitive art form among Tristano and fellow musicians like Lee Konitz, whom Ryman also admired, Konitz defended their style in a way that echoes Ryman’s attitude to painting. Konitz’s “sitting back and putting everything right into the groove where it’s supposed to be” seems to anticipate Ryman’s description of his own approach: “If I miss, then there isn’t any overpainting.… Once you play, that’s it.”