Talking Painting
Talking Painting- Dialogues with 12 Contemporary Abstract Artists was published by Routledge New York/London in 2002. Its subject matter stems from the mid to late 1990s with an investigation into so-called ‘new abstraction’ tendencies. It attempted to look at both critical art-writing around these tendencies and interview the artists in their studios. It has been unavailable now for some time, although I am constantly asked from artists and interested parties where it is available, so I’ve decided to upload some extracts from the book, focusing on the interviews I did with the artists. The book had new articles by Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Andrew Wilson and Andrew Benjamin, and reprinted essays by David Joselit, David Moos, Arthur C Danto, Joseph Masheck, and Peter Schjeldahl amongst others.
The complete list of the twelve artists are:
Lydia Dona
Fabian Marcaccio
David Reed
Jessica Stockholder
I hope to make all of these available soon, but at present the ones with an asterisk are available on this site. Professor Mark A Cheetham (University of Toronto) in a review for the Journal of Aesthetics and Art criticism (Vol 62 no.1, 2004) wrote: “Ryan’s dialogues are uniformly and laudably incisive. Ryan is a highly informed practitioner and theorist in this area of contemporary practice. His expertise and consistently probing voice elicit a great deal of illuminating material.” […] “Shirley Kaneda speculates that abstract ‘content can be seen as a resistance to oppression and dominance.’ In this she surely echoes historical abstraction’s not infrequent utopianism […] David Reed waxes eloquent about the richness and diversity of painting today. David Ryan’s timely dialogues make an assessment of these views both possible and pressing.”