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With so much art desperate to represent something, to showcase the artist’s point of view, to force polemics down your eyeholes, something is lost. As you are required to receive the lesson, the active role of the viewer disappears. You know, the fun part. This now happens in everything from TV to Opera, a desire to instruct that is often little more than an extension of social media consensus. You might simply call it Bad Art.
It is with some relief then, to find the Barbican presenting this first exhibition of Robert Ryman’s work in over 30 years. After recovering from an Art Week clogged with fevered egos, there is welcome respite here with an artist interested in ‘The Real Thing’. Meaning, the act of creating art, not trying to say anything with it. His predominantly white, minimalist work, concentrates on the movement of a brush, the depth of paint, the very act of mark-making; he said he was trying to “paint the paint”. The fittings, the nails and brackets used to hang his work from the walls, are as important as the images. It’s about the presence of them in the room, in relation to the walls, and the floors, and to the viewer. You have to fill in the blanks. And the effect is sublime.
