RYMAN: ROBERT RYMAN. USED PAINT

In this first book-length study of Robert Ryman, Suzanne Hudson traces the artist's production from his first paintings in the early 1950s, many of which have never been exhibited or reproduced, to his more recent gallery shows. Ryman's largely white-on-white paintings represent his careful working over of painting's conventions at their most radically reduced. Through close readings of the work, Hudson casts Ryman as a painter for whom painting was conducted as a continuous personal investigation. Ryman's method'an act of "learning by doing"'as well as his conception of painting as "used paint" set him apart from second-generation abstract expressionists, minimalists, or conceptualists. Hudson's chapters'"Primer," "Paint," "Support," "Edge," and "Wall," named after the most basic elements of the artist's work'eloquently explore Ryman's ongoing experiment in what makes a painting a painting. Ryman's work, Hudson argues, tests the medium's material and conceptual possibilities. It neither signals the end of painting nor guarantees its continued longevity but keeps the prospect of painting an open question, answerable only through the production of new