Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris
March 2023
March 6—July 1, 2024
Le regard en acte (The Eye in Action) is the first large-scale presentation of Robert Ryman’s work on French soil since 1981, a powerful confirmation of the artist’s importance in France just five years after his death. Most often equated with the American minimalist movement, Le regard en acte asserts that Ryman’s work demands to be viewed for itself and by itself.
While Ryman rejected the notion of influence and the idea of exhibiting in dialogue with another artist, the Musée de l’Orangerie, which harbors Claude Monet’s ultimate masterpiece, the Nymphéas, is particularly well suited for this exhibition. Like Monet before him, Ryman focused, almost obsessively, on his medium’s specificities, examining notions of surface, the work’s limit, the space into which it is incorporated, the light it plays with, and the duration in which it is deployed.
It is around these simple notions—surface, limit, space, light and duration—that the exhibition is organized. Ryman exhausted the potentialities of all basic elements of painting so as to better reveal themselves to one another. His eye in constant action, painting is reduced to its essentials and takes on its full meaning.
Learn more at Musée de l’Orangerie.