Barbican Centre · City of London
Robert Ryman: The Real Thing
Major retrospective of over 60 works by American painter Robert Ryman, whose largely white, square canvases invite a closer look at materials and surface.
Preview: written before the show opened
In 1958 Robert Ryman was a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, a jazz saxophonist who had taken the job to pay the bills. That year he made Untitled, a painting inspired by Mark Rothko, and it is one of the earliest works here.
There are over 60 paintings, from the mid-1950s to the early 2010s, mostly white and mostly square, on canvas, steel, fibreglass, Plexiglas and coffee filter paper. Upstairs covers his music, his studio, his signature and the fixings he left on show: custom fasteners, screws, staples and masking tape. Downstairs, works from across his career are hung for how they look together. It's the first in-depth UK show of his work in over 30 years.
The Barbican suggests 90 minutes and says the paintings reward close looking, so don't rush it. Thursday evenings from 5pm and Friday mornings are Pay What You Can.
Editor's pick
Almost everything is white and square, which is the point: Ryman painted on steel, fibreglass, Plexiglas and coffee-filter paper to see what the same white did on each. Over 60 works that make 'just white' sound like an insult.
Look for
Untitled, 1958
The early Rothko-inspired painting he made while guarding MoMA's galleries.
The Surface Veil group
Several Surface Veil paintings hang together for the first time since they shared Ryman's studio wall in 1970.
The fixings
Look at how each work is attached to the wall; Ryman made the screws, staples and tape part of the composition.
Untitled (Background Music)
A painting from around 1962 from the upstairs rooms on his life as a jazz musician.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Evening Visits
- Going Solo
- Nerding Out
About 90 min
Skip if
You want colour or a subject: these are mostly white square paintings about paint itself.
With kids
Under-16s go free, but children must be supervised and backpacks aren't allowed in the gallery.
