99 Ways to Paint Snow
POSTED BY Guest Blogger, ON November 10, 2010, 8 COMMENTS
I think the funniest artwork in the Art Institute’s collection is Robert Ryman’s Charter series. I hear people laughing in front of it all the time. In 2008, at the annual Speyer lecture held here at the museum, Ryman himself made a little joke about his four decade-long career as an artist who uses solely white paint.[1] Snow—that was Ryman’s preemptive answer to a question not asked by the audience. The crowd chuckled in knowing agreement; an artist like Ryman must have to employ a readymade counter to the incessant question, why white?
Ryman’s artworks are not paintings of snowscapes, but they sometimes do prompt an icy response from viewers. “Pictures of nothing” is what former MoMA curator Kirk Varnedoe might call them. “Icons of silence” is another poetic description, coined by art historian Barbara Rose. The Modern Wing gallery featuring Ryman’s five fiberglass panels, painted white and bolted to the gallery walls, is installed in the manner of the Rothko Chapel (Houston, 1971) or Barnett Newman’s Stations of the Cross (1958-66).[2] It is a total environment for the slow contemplation of painted objects.
On a recent walk through the Modern Wing, I counted thirteen white monochromatic paintings and sculptures on display, not including the several that have been recently rotated out of the galleries. The large number of all-white objects in the museum’s collection means that white monochromes are not an aberration in the history of art, at least, not any longer. They are a genre, like landscape or still-life. A nude painted by Picasso is very different than a nude by Matisse. Likewise, not all white monochromes are equal.
There is a spectrum of monochromes in the Art Institute’s collection, from Yves Klein’s shocking blue to a rainbow of Ellsworth Kelly panels to Ellen Gallagher’s tar black—but it is the white monochrome that seems to most persistently jar viewers. Where an art masterpiece is perhaps supposed to be filled with great substance and generous artistic insight, a white canvas rejects this assumption. A white canvas connotes a blank canvas. In a sense, the white monochrome offends because the artist seems to be withholding something. But what?
White monochromes have come to signal, in the history of art, the death of painting. The artist collective General Idea extended the death metaphor into their 1992 painting White AIDS #3. On this canvas they painted the word AIDS in the same style as Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE design, with the letters stacked into a square. Then, they whitewashed their message with gesso so that AIDS became obscured, with only the empty spaces inside the letters (in typography this empty space is called the “counter”) showing through the painted surface in a slightly different shade of white. The message here is visibly buried. Unlike Ryman’s flat, cool panels, General Idea’s canvas sucks you in for a close inspection. The prognosis is indeed death; the pallid painting has been bloodlet. If viewers are already provoked by white monochromes, then General Idea steers their anger toward a specific, political provocation.
Painter Judy Ledgerwood similarly exploited General Idea’s method of using various shades of white to reward perceptive, and perceptually sensitive, viewers. Ledgerwood’s white painting, So What (1998), unlike Ryman’s, does actually seem to be a picture of snow. It was exhibited in a show titled “Cold Days” at The Renaissance Society in the winter of 1999. Ledgerwood used a mix of white paints, and some shine with pearl and iridescence. When hit with the museum’s strong lights, the painting can pain one’s eyes, just like the experience of staring at fresh snow. Explaining the way she builds up layers of paint on her canvasses, Ledgerwood wrote, “I hope [there are] rewards for the people who are willing to spend more time in the process of looking at them.”[3] For a painter of white monochromes, this is a generous offering.
—Jason F., Department Coordinator, Prints and Drawings
Robert Ryman. The Elliott Room: Charter II, 1987. Lascaux acrylic on epoxy-edged fiberglass with aluminum with four unpainted round steel bolts. Gerald S. Elliott Collection, 1990.132b.
© 1985-87 Robert Ryman, Courtesy Pace Wildenstein.
Ellsworth Kelly. White Curve, 2009. Painted aluminum. Commissioned by The Art Institute of Chicago in honor of James N. Wood, President and Director, 1980–2004. Charles H. and Mary F.S. Worcester Collection Fund; Emily Rauh Pulitzer; Frederick W. Renshaw Acquisition, Mary and Leigh Block Endowment, and Ada Turnbull Hertle funds; Wirt D. Walker Trust; Joseph Shapiro, Helen A. Regenstein Endowment, Marian and Samuel Klasstorner, and Gladys N. Anderson funds; Getty Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Charles C. Haffner III, Mr. and Mrs. David C. Hilliard, and Susan and Lewis Manilow; anonymous gift; Mr. and Mrs. John H. Bryan, Stuart D. and Nancie Mishlove, Julius Lewis and the Rhoades Foundation, Margot and Thomas Pritzker, Burt and Anne Kaplan, Frances Dittmer, Marilynn B. Alsdorf, and Mr. and Mrs. Maurice F. Fulton; Robert Allerton Income Purchase and Director’s funds; Claire and Gordon Prussian, and Nancy A. Lauter McDougal and Alfred L. McDougal; Capital Campaign General Acquisitions Endowment; Polk Bros. Foundation; Marjorie and Louis B. Susman, Patricia A. Woodworth, Mrs. Robert B. Mayer, Mrs. Jetta N. Jones, and Mr. and Mrs. Gordon I. Segal., 2008.398. © Ellsworth Kelly.
General Idea. White AIDS #3, 1992. Gesso on canvas. Object 2036450.
James Bishop. Untitled, 1980. Oil on canvas. Through prior bequest of Marguerita S. Ritman; Flora Mayer Witkowsky, Ada S. Garrett, Max V. Kohnstamm, Mr. and Mrs. Frank G. Logan, and Laura Slobe Memorial prize funds; restricted gift of Judith Neisser., 2007.67. © James Bishop. Annemarie Verna Gallery.
Robert Smithson. Chalk-Mirror Displacement, 1969. Sixteen mirrors and chalk. Through prior gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Morris, 1987.277. Art © Estate of Robert Smithson / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.
Judy Ledgerwood. So What, 1998. Oil on canvas. 1999.225. Mr. and Mrs. Frank H. Armstrong Prize Fund, 1999.225.
Agnes Martin. Untitled #12, 1977. India ink, graphite, and gesso on canvas. Mr. and Mrs. Frank G. Logan Purchase Prize Fund, 1979.356.
[1] A. James Speyer Memorial Lecture on Contemporary Art. May 7, 2008.
[2] Neal Benezra, Robert Ryman: The Charter Series (The Art Institute of Chicago, 1987).
[3] Judy Ledgerwood, “Speakeasy,” New Art Examiner 23 (January 1996): 15.
I once heard someone ask of the Charter series if the “real” paintings had been stolen and those put in their place, like a bookmark. It gave me quite the giggle.
I will abashedly confess that at the Modern Wing opening party for museum employees, I suggested to my wife that the gallery of Ryman works must have not yet been installed.
I would never abashedly confess…!
I took a printed copy of this post to the Modern Wing last Saturday, and can report that nobody was found laughing in the Elliott room. (in fact, hardly anyone was found there at all, except to use its windows as an opportunity to photograph its magnificent view of Millennium Park)
The text up on the wall suggested that “the artist created shifts in effect and mood that are apparent upon sustained examination”. But I wonder if that writer could specify just which moods were apparent in which pieces.
BTW, who wrote that critical commentary, and why isn’t his/her name listed beneath it? It’s not exactly factual information, like merely listing the artist name and date.
Could that person now uncloak his/her identity and answer my question?
My conclusion from Jason’s “White Tour” is that,indeed, these objects do exemplify the “death of painting”, as well as the marginalization of aesthetic response. The kinds of effects these pieces create can be found everywhere, including the delicate modulation of shadow and texture on the white gallery walls that are behind them.
One may also note that almost all of these objects entered the AIC collection during the tenure of Director James Wood, who was also responsible for terminating the A.I.C.’s century long tradition of juried exhibitions of contemporary American and Chicago Vicinity art.
What’s the point of a jury if aesthetic discrimination is no longer an issue?
Now, how about assembling a white tour throughout the rest of the museum? There’s plenty of examples of all-white Ding ware over in the Chinese rooms, and some 19th C. white marbles in the American wing.
And, of course, the plain white walls of every gallery offer some “shifts in effect and mood that are apparent upon sustained examination”
Chris, I am reading a fantastic essay by Boris Groys, called “Critical Reflections,” that seems so pertinent to your questions that I quote it in length here:
“What made the classical avant-garde interesting and radical was precisely that it consciously shunned conventional social communication: it excommunicated itself. The ‘incomprehensibility’ of the avant-garde was not just the effect of a communication breakdown [between art and viewer]. Language, including visual language, can be used not only as a means of communication but also as a means of strategic dis-communication or even self-excommunication: that is, a voluntary departure from the community of the communicating. And this strategy of self-excommunication is absolutely legitimate. One can also wish to erect a linguistic barrier between oneself and the other in order to gain a critical distance from society. And the autonomy of art is nothing other than this movement of self-excommunication. It is a question of attaining power over differences, a question of strategy – instead of overcoming or communicating old differences, new ones are produced. The departure from social communication repeatedly practiced by Modern art has often been described, ironically, as escapism. Such escapism is always followed by a return: thus the Rousseauian hero first leaves Paris and wanders through forest and meadow only to return to Paris, set up a guillotine in the center of the city, and subject his former superiors and colleagues to a radical critique, that is, to cut off their heads. Every revolution worth its salt attempts to replace society as it is with a new, artificial society. The artistic impulse always plays a decisive role.”
I think a synonym for the “escapism” Groys describes, in modern art, is “autonomy.” Art objects such as white monochromes in the twentieth-century became autonomous objects in that they did not reference anything outside of their own being. Ryman is closely aligned with this sort of painted autonomy. Later white monochromes, such as by Ledgerwood and General Idea, critique this idea of autonomy and return painting to a social critique, or even the pleasure of looking.
This may help answer your questions about why white walls are not art, and why this article does not consider other white objects in the museum. It has everything to do with artistic intention and strategy, and that is an agreed upon reference for people who like art. White monochromatic paintings were invented during a very specific period of time and in a specific place. It was a specific revolution, aimed at specific assumptions about painting. I hope this clarifies.
Thanks, Jason, for introducing me to Boris Groys. His discussion of the possible intentions of Ryman’s paintings is much more engaging than the works themselves, and it seems more relevant than the search for “shifts in effect and mood” proposed by the gallery’s current signage.
But you don’t really need to see any of these white paintings to follow his argument, do you?
Wouldn’t a display of the Elliott room be much more effective in virtual reality, where a mouse-click can connect one to all the relevant discussion of history and theory (including your very informative post)?
Perhaps it’s only the vestige of out-dated tradition that compels museums to give this kind of work wall space and accompany it with wall-text that suggests it has more aesthetic importance than the wall behind it.
And even if artistic intention and strategy is an agreed upon reference for *some* people who like art, there’s a real problem with connecting it to specific art and artists.
As you noted above, “Snow” was Ryman’s preemptive answer to the question of “why white?” – so one can safely say that artists themselves don’t always take their intentions and strategies very seriously.
I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that Ryman doesn’t take himself seriously simply because he told a joke.
In 1979. both Robert Ryman and Agnes Martin were included in the Art Institute’s 73rd American Exhibition.
http://www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/pubs/1979/AIC1979PandS73rdAn_comb.pdf
The Agnes Martin piece now on display won the Logan prize that year, prompting A. James Speyer, Curator of 20th Painting and Sculpture, to quote Mrs. Logan in the exhibition catalog:
“To think that when we established the award we didn’t reserve the right to say something about the paintings which should get it”.
To which the mischievous Speyer then responded: “One chuckles to think how Mrs. Logan would feel about the use of prize today”
And incredibly enough, Anne Rorimer, Associate Curator of 20th C. painting and sculpture, devoted 6 full pages in the catalog to explain what she calls the “new realism”:
“The artists in the 73rd American Exhibition in various ways have contributed to the development of a new “realism” by responding as well to “our real situation in the world today” inasmuch as reality is no longer thought to be masked. With nothing to unmask, the artist must investigate reality directly, not for the sake of producing a literal “verisimilitude,” but in order to realize relevant artistic ideas.”
One of those “relevant artistic ideas” has elsewhere been explained by Agnes Martin:
“the function of art work is . . . the renewal of memories of moments of perfection.”, and “A work of art is successful when there is a hint of perfection present – at the slightest hint, the work is alive”
But if you feel the work is rather boring and lifeless, you still might agree with Boris Groys that the pieces are better understood as “strategic dis-communication or even self-excommunication”
Agnes Martin also wrote: “when we live our lives it’s something like a race – our minds become concerned and covered over and we get depressed and have to get away for a holiday”
Which has led one critic to observe that:
“Many patrons of Agnes Martin are women (and very few are men), and I think we may propose that many of these women—especially the ones born before 1950—were damaged by having to live in a patriarchal society ….Although the unfairness doesn’t justify white canvases and so on, it may explain them to some degree — it is not that the rooms create any real peace, it is that those who like to go there need the emptiness.”
Then we might query, “If these Rothko chapels and Agnes Martin rooms are necessary”… should we “erect them as annexes to the sanitariums, not as annexes to the museums.” ( http://mileswmathis.com/agnes.html )
But still the question remains, by what criteria would a white canvas by Ryman or Martin be selected for museum display in preference to objects painted white by anyone else?
One possible answer is: “because they cost the most”.
Are there any others?