Robert Ryman with Phong Bui

June, 2007

After his last show, No Title Required, at Pace Gallery uptown, painter Robert Ryman welcomed
Rail Publisher Phong Bui to his West Village studio to talk about his recent paintings and other
related work.

Robert Ryman, No Title Required, (2006).

Enamel on wood. 10 panels, overall dimensions: 55 x 688 (139.7 cm x 1,747.5 cm); individual
panels range from 50 x 50 (127 cm x 127 cm) to 55 x 55 (139.7 cm x 139.7 cm). Robert
Ryman, Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York. Photo by: Ellen Labenski / Courtesy
PaceWildenstein, New York

Phong Bui (Rail): When I walk into the larger room of the gallery, there are ten panels, eight on
one wall and two on the next, adjacent to the corner. What interests me apart from their framing
devices, which are made out of maple, cherry, and oak, is that their rotation appears quite
uneven, their proportions are not identical. Perhaps the sixth and the seventh panel are the same?

Robert Ryman: None are the same. I composed the paintings mostly by the color, but also by
the size of the panels. There are no identical panels, each panel is one half inch different from the
next. I forget now what the smallest is. I think the largest is 55 inches and the smallest is
however many half-inches below that. One possibility, of course, was to put them from the
smallest to the largest, but I didnt want to do that because I wanted to make visual movement.
So I would put a large light color panel next to another light-colored one thats a little smaller,
but not the smallest necessarily. And then a medium color, like an oak, next to that, so it was a
visual composition. That was the first time I could actually see the painting, which is why there
couldnt be a catalog; because it could not be photographed until I actually installed all the
panels.
Rail: It was a site-specific improvisation. I felt there was also optical ambience to it.

Ryman: The panels at both ends were the light colors. I didnt want one of the dark ones on the
ends because then that would close in visually. So the lighter colors move outward,...also, I had
the spaces in between each panel to work with, and then the height, as well.

Rail: And the intervals between both panels are identical?

Ryman: Yes. Except for the corner, that was differentbecause it had to look like it was the
same visually.

Rail: I also noticed that the frames are flush with the picture surface, and the fact that you
allowed the paint to overlap the inner edges of the frame. Would it be fair to assume that the
frame functions as part of the painted field?

Ryman: The painted field ended because of the line. Actually there are three lines. Theres a line
made by the outer wood joining the center panel. And thats a hard straight line. I wanted to
soften the line, so I went over it with the paint. And that gave a soft, curved line next to the hard
line. And the third hard line is the edge of the panel itself. So I wanted to soften the hard line. It
seems like the panels have framesthey act that way in a sense. But the painting is actually the
whole ten panels together.

Rail: Were they painted with oil enamel in different layers with the brush?

Ryman: Yes, several layers, three layers with high-gloss enamel.

Rail: Is that the reason why you couldnt have direct light on them?

Ryman: I wanted to show them, if possible, in the reflected light. Because thats where the
painting can be activated, in reflected light, particularly with high-gloss enamel. You have the
surface that will bounce off the light. Some people might say it is ambient light, but thats
different in my thinking. If you have a soft light thats thrown up to the ceiling, that would be
ambient light. But that doesnt work the same, strangely enough. If the light is shone on to the
floor and it bounces up, it doesnt work the same either. The light has to come opposite the
painting. The source is reflected off of something into the space and onto what it is you want to
present. Theres a museum in Switzerland in the town of Schaffhausen that has a number of my
paintings, and theres a wall 150 feet long, with a passageway in front, and opposite that are
three rooms with skylights. Now the 150 foot wall doesnt have any direct light on it. The light
comes from the reflections of the three rooms opposite this wall. And the light is ideal. It is a
matter of seeing more clearly. So I tried to equal that experience.
 Portrait of the artist. Pencil on paper by Phong
Bui.

Rail: How about in the smaller room, with the three big paintings, painted on linen stapled to the
frame. Were they mounted on the frame before or after they were painted?

Ryman: The canvas was stapled onto the wooden panels. Those were the first ones I did before I
did the painting in the big room. And that is a different process. The canvases themselves were
begun in Pennsylvania in 1999. And at that time I lost contact with them, I didnt like what was
happening with them, so I just rolled them up and put them away. And then I brought them to
New York in 2005, and I thought I would look at them to see if there was anything there at all.
So, I tacked them onto the wall to see them and I thought, What am I going to do with these?
Is there anything to do with these? And I thought, well maybe I could put them on a panel. My
first thought was to staple them at the top to the wooden panel and have them drape, like paper,
down over the panel so that you could see the wood support underneath, and you could see their
own movement. I had the panels made larger than the canvas, so the wood would be visible.
Anyway, that didnt work at all, that was a disaster. I couldnt control the drape. The canvases
had been sized, and it just wasnt working. So the only other thing to do was to tack them flat
and do away with looking at the wood behind. And then when I saw the wood edge I thought I
could paint directly on other panels. So I then had the other panels made.

Rail: So the smaller panels came after the big ones?

Ryman: Yes.

Rail: And the formats of the three largest paintings arent identical either?
Ryman: Thats right. They are very similar in size, but they differ by an inch, or an inch and a
half. And theyre not exactly square either. The way they were originally made was they were
stretched and then cut off of a strainer. So they were just sheets of canvas.

Rail: The frame piece is square, but the canvas is not.

Ryman: Well, the panel itself was made for the size of the canvas. Its close to being square,
maybe off a half inch.

Rail: The last time we spoke, you said that you spent a great deal of your time buying different
materials, brushes of various sizes, all the available brands of paint, canvas, linen, panel and so
on, treated it almost like a scientific experiment?

Ryman: I guess you can say that painting is a kind of experiment. Thats what I do, thats my
approach to painting, to figure out how it works, the different possibilities that can happen with
painting. Its just my sensibility. I like to know how it works and I like to know how things go
together. Its a visual experience, and with my paintings I dont really plan them, it has to come
about visually. I have to see how its developing, what can come from it, and then I make the
decision whether I like it or not.

Rail: As Yve Alain-Bois put it, quite eloquently, Ask Robert Ryman why and he will always tell
you how. [laughs]

Ryman: [laughs]

Robert Ryman, Archive (1980). Oil on steel

34.130.2 cm (13.511.875 inches). Private collection. Courtesy of the artist and
PaceWildenstein.
Rail: Did the experience of working as a guard at the MoMA, which you did for seven years
from 1953 to 1960 (like Brice Marden, Mel Bochner, Dan Flavin, etc.) inform your study of
painting? Ive been told that during your tenure there, you deliberately and carefully scheduled
your shift to look at different paintings in your rotation. Could you talk about that?

Ryman: At that time, it was a perfect job, because, well, I had no money, and I had to live by my
wits, kind of. And so that was a job where I could be close to painting, close to art, every day. I
could see the workings of the museum. It was very valuable, in that sense, and of course the
hours were good too. The museum, at that time, was open from eleven until six at night, so I had
the mornings. And it paid enough just to pay the rent, and buy new materials. And it wasnt a
demanding job, where you were expected to grow with the business; it wasnt that kind of a
thing. It was just a simple job. And I learned so much from that. One day I just left, and I had no
other job, but I thought, well, Ive been here long enough and I dont need to be here anymore.
[laughs]

Rail: What happened after that?

Ryman: I just quit one day and had no place to go. I was sitting in Bryant Park and wondering
what I was going to do next. My money had run out, and I looked up and saw the public library,
and so I thought, Maybe they have something. [laughs] So I went in and I got a job in the art
division of the public library, where I was for a year. And I got to look at all the books.

Rail: You once said, I decided to actually paint white rather than use it as a neutral paint,
which is to say that you paint white as a subject matter, like the way other people paint figure,
landscape, still life or portraiture?

Ryman: I started out like everybody starts out: I had to learn about color, I had to learn about
different paints, and I learned about composition, and how things worked. So I worked with
color it wasnt a matter of just painting white. Yes, those aluminum paintings, which were
done in 64, of which I did fouractually, I did five, one is in Europe at the moment its
difficult to talk about those because no one has seen them, no one knows what Im talking
about [laughs] But they were working with the light, and the way the light would work with
the metal, and also the composition of color, and the soft edges and the harder edges working
together. And after I did those, I thought I didnt want to go in that direction because it was too
complicated working with metal in that way. And so I wrapped them up and put them away and
never saw them, totally forgot about them, until a few years ago, when they were shown in
Dallas, at the Dallas Art Museum, for the first time.

Rail: They seem to be the most complicated of your work.

Ryman: Well, I was going to say, from the catalog, you couldnt really tell what these are. When
you actually see the paintings, its quite astonishing because, as you walk around them, they
change with the light.

Rail: Because of their aluminum surfaces?

Ryman: Its because of the way the light acts with the surface of the painting, because some of
these have altered surfaces. I mean, I was actually working with the surface of the metal as well
as with the paint. Thats why I decided not to do it anymore, because I was getting into a
different process.

Rail: When and how did you know that, besides the commitment to the color white, the square
was to become and continues to be, your self-imposed format?

Ryman: Well, I dont know exactly. Ive always been comfortable with that because its an
equal-sided space.. It could be large, it could be small. It just has a good feeling. I had done some
things that were rectangular earlier. I havent done anything with that recently, maybe I will. Its
something I just do automatically. I dont think about it.

Rail: In other words, theres no thinking in reference to Malevich, Mondrian or Albers?

Ryman: No. Its just that its a comfortable, equal-sided space.

Rail: Some critics of your work insist on the anti-biographical or anti-metaphysical aspects,
which have so often been associated with your work. Others think of you as a puritan painter, or
a pragmatic painter who thinks concretely through his materials. Is that a fair observation?

Ryman: Well, of course. Theres no symbolism. Theres no narrative in this painting. Theyre
not pictures of things that we know, so that may be difficult for some people. You never know
what a person is seeing when they look at a painting. Its not a matter of seeing something in it
even something about itits a matter of having an experience, a visual experience that is
pleasing. Actually, youre seeing something that youve never seen before. If someone looks at a
picture of something that you know, of a landscape, things with symbolic references, that have a
lot of narrative, someone can relate to those. But thats not really what painting is about, in my
thinking. The what of the painting is incidental to the how. What you experience in painting is
how its put together. How its done. It has nothing to do with purity or anything like that; its a
basic approach to painting.

Rail: When did the addition of fastenings and framing devices come about?

Ryman: In 1975, I think it was, the first ones had the visual fastening. With my approach to
painting (not representing a picture of a narrative situation or symbolism) I thought I could use
visible fastening. My painting didnt have to be invisibly fastened to the wall, since it wasnt like
a picture. My painting was different than that. It didnt have to hang invisibly. It could be visibly
attached to the wall, and therefore work with the space itself. And then the fasteners could be
part of the composition.

Rail: Right. So it enhances the object-ness of the painting?

Ryman: You would see the composition and you could actually see the painting attached to the
wall, which makes it literally part of the wall itself. Sometimes I still use visible fastenings. It
depends on the nature of the work, the nature of a certain problem.
Rail: How do you mediate your painting gesture? Do you begin from the top and work to the
bottom, left to right, or from the middle? Im curious because, despite your obtaining all-over
rhythm with repetitive strokes, there are irregularities that occur sometimes in the middle, around
the edges, or maybe a single corner.

Ryman: Again, it all depends on the type of paint that Im using and the surface Im working
with and the general approach that it involves. But its not a crazy thing. I have a certain control
from the beginning because the painting really begins with the surface itself, and what kind of
paint Im going to use, and what kind of brush Im going to use, and whether Im going to have a
lot of actual movement in the paint, whether the paints going to be thick or thin, how thats
going to work. And whether its going to be absorbing the light or reflecting it. I think about
those things beforehand, so that has to be how I might begin.

Rail: Do you often make tests or studies for your paintings?

Ryman: Well, sometimes Ill test paint to see how the paint is going to act. Sometimes Ill test
surfaces if Im working on metal or any kind of different surface. I have to see how the paint is
going to work on that. Ill do tests in that sense, but I dont do any studies. I dont know myself
what its going to look like until it gets to the point where I can see whats happening. [laughs]

Rail: How did the fiberglass pieces with wax paper, which are either taped or nailed to the wall,
begin, and what was the impulse behind them?

Ryman: Those paintings I did in, I think its 1969, 1968 maybe. The approach I was taking
there. (Id forgotten about that). It was a group of six paintings, mostly about 6 ½ feet, 7
feet at the largest, and they were stapled to the wall. And I used the wall, and since the wall itself
was the support, I could continue on the wall itself around the edge of the canvas, and on one I
used wax paper. The painting itself absorbed the light, and the wax paper had this soft reflection
that sort of moved the light around the painting and I liked the composition, the reflection and
the absorption. And just the staples on the wall, and the wax paper was so simple; it had a
different feeling to it than plastic. Plastic would not be the same, even glacine paper was
different. Wax paper had this softness to it that I liked very muchThe wax paper was taped to
the wall and I used the tape as part of the composition. So I had these yellow dots of tape that
moved around the edge of the painting on the wall.

Rail: How about the group of paintings on steel?

Ryman: Those were all relatively small. Those were steel panels made in Switzerland, and I had
the fasteners attached to the steel itself. It was just something that had an interesting feeling to it.
This particular one youre looking at, with a red surface, rust redI dont know what I have to
say about it.

Rail: Im interested in the way that the deep rusted color of the steel surface makes you aware of
the painted surface and all the edges.
Ryman: Of course compositionally the panel was very hard, the edges were very hard, and then
the paint was very soft, and it made this soft edge there. I do that kind of thing many times in
painting. Working with hard and soft.

Rail: When and how did you begin to incorporate the signature as part of the painting?

Ryman: That was earlier, 1957 or 1958. It was just an element of painting where I didnt use
line so much in my painting, and I felt that my signature could be a line. I generally would turn
my signature on its side. If its on the sideone side of the signature is soft and round, and the
other is hard, because the lines go out. So I could use that in various ways as a compositional
element, and I thought it was acceptable because painters usually sign their paintings, so I could
sign the painting and use it as a compositional part at the same time. I also used the year
sometimes as a compositional element. In fact I did that fairly recently, cant remember whether
it was 1990, or I dont remember, but I had the yearoh no it was in the 80s, 1984.

Rail: How do you see the relationship between drawing and painting in your work?

Ryman: One is drawing and one is painting. I think of drawing as having to do with line and so
if Im drawing, thats what Ill use. Ill use different things to make the line, and different
surfaces to put the line on, but its about line, and how that works with the space.

Rail: So you keep the two activities separate?

Ryman: Yes. Mostly I dont use line in my painting. I dont use it as a lineif theres a line in a
painting, its two areas of paint that have come together to form a line. But Im not consciously
drawing a line.

Rail: Id like to shift to a different subject: two remarks that you made in the past. One was at
the time of your retrospective at the Guggenheim in 1972, to Paul Cummings, when he asked,
How do you feel seeing all the works together in a big space? Your response was, I only went
to the show once while it was up, because its done and finished and theres no need to see it
again. And later you commented about your show in Dia in 1989: I dont do things that I know
I can do. I feel there is a strong pragmatic sense in that you finish a certain thing and move on.

Ryman: Actually, I havent seen the Pace show again either. I mean, I saw it very well when I
put it up, so I dont have to go back to see it.

Rail: Why do you think that is?

Ryman: I dont know. I have seen it. I dont know what to say about it. I saw all those things. I
dont need to see them again necessarily. I dont know. The paintings I have in this museum in
Schaffausen, Switzerland I hadnt seen in 12 years and I just went to see them again a couple of
years ago, and I was surprised actually when I saw it. It had been so long I had forgotten some of
the paintings that were there, and after 12 years, I thought, lets make a different installation,
because the paintings are a little too crowded. I dont know when, but we will do a new
installation there. I like to see my paintings again.
Rail: Is there work by other artists that you would like to see your paintings hanging next to?

Ryman: No. My painting is not the kind of painting that would hang next to someone elses
work necessarily. Because it doesnt work that way. My painting needs space and a certain
situation, it needs light.

Rail: Brice Marden told Jeffery Weiss and I that he considers you our Vermeer, the American
Vermeer. And Kurt Varnedoe, at his fifth Mellon Lecture, described you as a Matisse-loving
urbanite. I suppose that both comments suggest the tranquility, the poetic light, as well as a
joyous quality that your painting emanates. Is that a fair observation?

Ryman: Matisse was always an influence on me because of the way he put things together, and
again, how he did it. It was so direct, it seemed as if he knew exactly what to do. Im sure he
didnt exactly. But it had that feeling, which was what I liked.

Rail: Is there a certain phase of his work that you respond to more than others?

Ryman: No, not necessarily. But I guess some of his smaller paintings of interiors, with the
figure, were put together in such an unbelievable way; those were some of my favorites.

Rail: De Kooning said that the reason why he likes Matisses work is because he doesnt make
isms, he just makes the painting. So among the Abstract Expressionists, is there a particular one
whose work you prefer over others?

Ryman: All of them. Franz Kline was a wonderful painter, and De Kooning, Rothko. All of
them, just really wonderful painters. And Guston, as well.

Rail: Especially those from the early to mid 1950s.

Ryman: Those were wonderful. That reminds me of a show Guston had at the Met three years
ago, a very interesting show, except it was terribly put together. The galleries were cramped and
the paintings were too close. It was too bad, but the paintings were wonderful.

Rail: Is there a transcendental aspect in your work?

Ryman: I dont even know what that means.

Rail: How about the notion of the sublime?

Ryman: Oh, no. Its nothing like that. Im not involved in that at all.

Rail: Were you brought up with a hint of spiritual leaning?

Ryman: Oh, no. I quickly got away from that.

Rail: What are you working on now?

Ryman: Well, I was thinking about working with some epoxy paint, on a smaller scale. But I
probably wont do much of that. I dont like to work with epoxy because its so dangerous. But
as soon as the weather gets warmer and I can open the windows in Pennsylvania, maybe I can do
a little. You get such an incredible surface with that paint. Maybe Ill do that and maybe not.
Maybe it will develop into something else that Im not aware of.

Rail: Why, all of these years, have you never thought of having a studio assistant?

Ryman: Well, [laughs], sometimes I could use an assistant, just to organize things, but not to
help me with the paintings. But they wouldnt know what to do. I dont want to spend time to tell
them. I do everything I can myself. I used to stretch my own canvas, go through boiling the glue
and sizing, all of that. I made my own stretchers. But of course I dont do that now, because I
dont have the strength. But I like to do as much as I can myself, because the painting really
begins with the surface, and how its going to work. So someone else wouldnt know what to do.
It would be nice to have someone at times, for organization. I spend a lot of time with
paperwork, letters are not answered, not because I dont want to answer them, but I just dont
have the time, I cant deal with them. But otherwise, no.

Rail: In conclusion, you would agree with what Matisse said, He who wants to dedicate himself
to painting should start by cutting out his tongue.

Ryman: [laughter] That sounds right.