Ryman's White @ Centre Pompidou

Robert Ryman, Untitled, 1974

The permanent collection on levels 4 and 5 of the Centre Pompidou is now open for visitors. A new, open staircase now makes the transition between modern and contemporary art more comfortable, encouraging reflection as we move from one part of the twentieth century to the next. And because the staircase leads directly to the central corridor of each space, the first thing I noticed about the new hanging of contemporary (postwar) art was the replacement of Warhol’s Ten Lizes with a Robert Ryman triptych, Untitled, 1974. Placing the all white piece in prime location is a courageous move on the part of the Pompidou Centre. Unlike Ten Lizes, Ryman’s white plexiglass works are not instant crowd pleasers. I imagine that many people who stop to examine the work will not know what they are meant to be looking at.

Robert Ryman, Untitled, 1962

For others however, Ryman’s flat white works can be approached as a challenge. Once we get past the hesitation that comes with determining their status, the works are infinitely fascinating. As we move around the space in front of the one at the Pompidou, the triptych never sits still. The panels change from white to cream to a tinted grey, from reflective to absorbent of light, and as the work catches the light, together with the movement of our eyes, we notice the individual panels appear to be different sizes. And then, when we try to photograph it, the white picks up the ultra-violet light of the gallery illumination and the panels become coated in a blue shadow. A similar refraction causes another single panel painting, Criterion, under plexiglass to become striated with a series of vertical bands of shadow when seen through the iphone lens. If it weren’t for the fact that the bands continue beneath and above the painting, we might mistake the work for an Agnes Martin image when looking at the photograph the next day.

Kazemir Malevich, White on White, 1918

What I love most about Ryman’s white paintings is the difficulty of looking at them. Not only is it difficult to know what we are looking at and where to focus, but they also hurt the eyes. White has a way of pushing us back with its cold distant definitiveness, and when Ryman finishes the work by placing it under plexiglass there is nothing inviting us closer. But in a later Untitled white painting from 1962, Ryman softens the blow. In this expressive early canvas, Ryman weaves slithers of blue into short, thick brushstrokes, giving thickness to white paint and reminding us that painting is an object. This is accentuated by the fact that the paint, the prime and the canvas are mounted on cardboard and framed, layer upon layer, under glass, as if it was an object in a display case. 

Robert Rauschenberg, White Painting [Three Panel], 1951

The privilege of white painting by Robert Ryman, Agnes Martin, Robert Rauschenberg, all the way back to El Lissitzky and Kazemir Malevich is that white can’t be reproduced. It can be created, but not reproduced or represented by another medium. White painting looks like nothing in a photograph. Or white looks blue, or catches the light that supposedly illuminates it, light that discolours the white, but is meant to be doing the exact opposite. And so we have no option but to see in the flesh that the object of painting is the paint itself. In this sense, white forces the recognition of painting more than any other colour. Yes, a lot of works don’t reproduce, but very few reproduce as nothing – only white can do this. The fullness of white in the flesh that renders Ryman’s work an optical experience, goes together with the inability to reproduce the white paintings, to make art that is not only reduced to its ontological components—paint, light, seeing—but in doing so, it will always resist commodification. For me, that makes Ryman’s white paintings great.

Robert Ryman, Criterion, 1976

I say all of this, and yet today, nearly sixty years later, the experience I have with these works is one encouraged by lush and dense paintings that are more expressive than ever. And so, I have to admit, some of the white works are anything but empty and nothing. In another contradiction that I like to think the artist would scoff at, in 2015, Ryman’s Bridge (1980) sold for $20.6 million. I guess then that there must, after all, be some value in white.

teamLab Au-delà des limites @ la Villette

Les Fleurs et personnes ne peuvent être contrôlées,
mais elles vivent ensemble

teamLab is a Japanese group of artists, programmers, engineers, architects, mathematicians and animators that have turned the Grande Hall de La Villette into an immersive, interactive experience for the whole family. On a sweltering hot Paris afternoon, there were kids of all ages—from 5 to 75—wandering, lying, sitting, dreaming and interacting with the imagescapes in au-delà des limites.

 

La paix est possible même sans ordre

The images are design innovations before they are aesthetically challenging or conceptually interesting. The walls, floors and, in one room, screens are overtaken with fully interactive image narratives, some of which have no beginning and no end. Others are clearly story narratives, though not of the cause and effect kind. Children loved in particular the installations that required full interaction from the visitors: works activated and further developed by touching, moving along or towards the wall. The thrill was in the process of creating images rather than in the images created. 

 

A visitor walking past the above installation

Two of the installations invite visitors to sit on the floor and not just watch, but allow the constantly moving procession of images to wash over them. For these, one in the biggest space and the other in a small room, I sat at the edge of the room, others lay in the middle, and still others walked around. The music and images together (both electronically generated) were so hypnotic that I fell asleep. In the heat of the non-air-conditioned former abattoir, lulled by images and sounds in motion, was a surprisingly restful experience.

 
Univers de particules d'eau dans Au-delà des limites

The installations are a coming together of electronic and organic, technology and nature, human, and flora and fauna. We watch sunflowers grow, birds and butterflies flying, flowers blooming, stars falling water cascading, and figures walking. The exhibition as a whole is a living digital organism constantly churning out new images that make a sharp break with our daily lives, thus whisking us off to a dreamlike world. While I did think the world created was more interesting from a technological and design perspective, the effect of being lulled into an organic world of pure relaxation by the computer generated in a former abattoir was interesting.