Robert Ryman in "Paradox" - Season 4 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

ROBERT RYMAN:
The real purpose of painting is…

is to give pleasure.

I mean that’s really uh the…

the main thing that it’s about.

I mean there can be the story,

you know there can be a lot of history behind it,

there can be…

but when it, you know when it…

you don’t have to know all of those things uh to…

to receive the pleasure from a painting.

Uh, it’s like listening to some music.

You don’t have to know the score of a 
symphony in order to appreciate the symphony.

You can just listen to the sounds.

In Nashville when I was growing up,

you didn’t hear anything but 
country music on the radio

and juke boxes at that time and I 
was never really interested in that.

I was more interested in uh jazz.

I would hunt around late at 
night on the radio trying to find

a New York station or something 
where I could hear something else.

It was the music really that was 
more interesting for me than…

than painting which I’d never seen.

So when I came to New York,

it was the music that was 
the most important thing.

I was playing bop...bebop. (LAUGHS)

You know I was...Charlie Parker and Zoot Sims,

(LAUGHS)

and I think that had an influence on

my approach to painting because

you played on a structure and 
you learned your instrument

and then you played within the structure.

Well, it seemed like a logical 
thing to begin painting that way.

You know I would learn about paint and then

I would learn about what 
you could do with the paint.

In painting, something has to look 
easy even though it might not be easy.

That’s an important part of painting,

that it has to have that feeling of…

like it just happened.

It used to be when I was playing,

we would say tunes, no one 
uses the term tunes anymore,

you know it’s songs.

If someone is singing 
something and telling a story

and it’s very similar to 
representational painting where,

you know, you tell a story with 
the paint and with symbols.

I wasn’t interested in painting a narrative,

telling a story with a painting.

I thought the painting should just be 
about what it’s about and not (LAUGHS)

not about other things.

One thing that I learned from music 
that I’ve carried over to painting was

if you are an entertainer, you have to entertain.

I didn’t want to do that.

The other way was to just 
to do whatever you wanted

and the audience had to come to you or not.

And uh that’s...that was my 
approach right from the beginning.

Uh I wasn’t going to be an entertainer.

In all of my paintings, I discover things.

Sometimes I’m surprised at the 
result, but I know what I’m doing.

(LAUGHS) Even though I let...even 
though I don’t know what I’m doing.

(LAUGHS)

Always...my approach uh tends 
to be uh from experiments.

I generally do a lot of 
tests before I do paintings.

Tests on paints to see which is the 
best thing to use on a certain material,

how fastening is going to work, how the 
light is going to work, things like that.

I’m not involved with any kind of art movement or…

or I’m not a scholar and I’m not a historian.

I just look at it as solving problems

and working on the painting 
and a visual experience.

I don’t have any assistants.

I like to do it all myself.

I like to know what’s going on all the time.

It’s coming along. (LAUGHS)

When I was just beginning to paint, I…

I thought I have to become 
not afraid of the paint.

Not afraid of the cost of the paint, you know,

not afraid of wasting it and I would…

I smeared some on my hand and just put it down on…

just…

wasted some paint so to speak, so 
that I would not be afraid of it.

I like to do something that I 
don’t know exactly how to do.

When I finish the problem, I 
don’t have to go on with it.

I’m more interested in finding 
what else I can do that…

that’s more of a challenge for me.

I would never show a painting 
that I didn’t feel right about.

I would never let it out.

There might have been a few paintings that 
I’ve destroyed through the years that…

some I’ve wish I hadn’t but it wasn’t 
that the paintings maybe were not good,

but they weren’t what I 
wanted at the moment and so I…

you know I rejected them.

But usually I work them 
through so that they are okay.

RYMAN: Could you get the hot spots, kind of move…

move the hot spots down so the wall is 
more even and not so hot at the top?

SPEAKER: That’s easy.

RYMAN: I work with real light.

I mean the light is not really painted 
into the painting in an illusionistic way,

as you would paint a landscape or something,

but my paintings work with real light.

It’s not just a matter of 
daylight or incandescent light,

it’s also the quality of the light.

But sometimes, you want a 
softer light to bring it alive.

I think of my painting as not really as abstract,

because I don’t abstract from anything.

It’s involved with real visual aspects 
of what you really are looking at,

whether it’s wood or...or you 
see the paint and the metal

and how it’s put together and 
how it works with the wall

and how it works with the light.

I use real light and I use real surface.

I don’t use any illusion.

It’s the real thing that you see.

It’s a real experience. (LAUGHS)

The paintings move outward 
in a sense, aesthetically.

They...they go out into the space of the room

and they certainly involve 
the wall itself that it’s on.

What you’re seeing is really what it is.

Anything else will dilute 
it or you know disturb it.

I never thought of white as being a color.

White could do things that 
other colors could not do.

White has a tendency to make things visible.

You can see more of the nuance.

It’s been only recently where I 
actually did some white paintings and…

which I call white.

I began with that square 
in the ‘50s actually and I…

somehow it’s become so natural to me that 
I just don’t think of it any other way.

A square has always been, you know,

just an equal sided space that you could work with

and it didn’t have the feeling of a landscape or,

you know, some kind of a window or a doorway 
that we usually associate with rectangles.

It’s just a very neutral kind of a space.

Sometimes after I finish a group of paintings,

I’m not sure what to do next.

And it may be I have to wait a while, 
you know maybe a month or...or so.

Two months.

You know I don’t worry about it…

and then slowly things fall into 
place and I try a few things and…

and then I realize that what else could be done

and what interests me at the moment.

It’s...it’s called PHILADELPHIA PROTO…

well, actually it’s called 
THIRD PHILADELPHIA PROTOTYPE.

The panels are not really the painting.

The painting consists of the two walls.

The original surface of the panels are the same.

Even from the first showing.

The only thing that changes is the…

is the edge which goes onto the wall itself.

Some of the tape is going off 
of the panel onto the wall,

and others seem to just appear on the wall.

Which tells you that it’s…

it was not really the first time it was done.

That’s done on purpose because I don’t 
want it to be the exact same each time.

The light is extremely important 
in the way it affects the panels.

In the afternoon, later when the 
sun moves around to this side the…

the panels will look very different.

The softer light brings out the 
nuances and you can see the…

the panels have a glow which would be 
wiped out in a strong straight on light.

Yesterday was the first time 
I actually saw the space.

It should be a soft, quiet experience.

It’s nice to look at.

I like this.