Robert Ryman @ PAFA

It's a bit hard to talk about Robert Ryman's speech at PAFA seeing as that he didn't talk much about his work himself. I was initially excited to get to hear such an established artist talk about his work. When Ryman opened saying that he wasn't going to talk about art but he was going to talk about painting, I though, YES! this is already sounded like it's going to be an intriguing lecture. Ryman, than proceeded to talk about how there are "right and wrong" ways to paint. I personally thought he was going to expand on how AB-EX has standards just like any form of art. However, this subject was not touched upon again. Ryman proceeded to talk about Matisse's work and how well thought through the shape, form, and color where. Ryman only showed about three of his own slides which he only discussed in terms of light reflection and refraction. I was a bit disappointed. I thought that someone who would have had to undergo intense criticism with AB-EX and white on white paintings to be able to talk more about their work. Ryman wasn't even able to answer questions! I personally found the lecture to be a bit of a joke. Whether Ryman just didn't want to talk about his work, or felt that he'd already said enough in the past, I wasn't impressed with the lecture of the laughing that resulted from questions asked. At least I liked his paintings!