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Art: Ryman's White-on-White Oeuvre
Colors at Guggenheim - Other Local Shows
By JOHN CANADAY

A sort of interesting thing happened at the Guggenheim Museum the other day when I dropped in to see the Robert Ryman show. Mr. Ryman paints white-onwhite canvases and these were ranged on the museum's white walls over the first several levels of the ramp. A Frenchwoman was following close on my heels at the entrance, her admission fee clutched in her hand, but she took one surprised look at the place and said, "Mais c'est vide!" and pocketed her fee and walked out.

I must say, she hit the nail pretty much on the head, not exactly taking the words out of my mouth but doing better than I could have done in maximum compression of critical comment. It isn't that Mr. Ryman's work does not please me, for in a way it does. The variations of white are pleasant enough to look at. But the huge dimensions of some of the canvases and the really grotesque dimensions of the critical attention they have received makes the whole thing an example of super-inflation possible only in the irrational world of would-be avant-garde art in New York today.

The idea of so trivial and obvious and even outmoded a body of work being given all this space in a major museum is ludicrous. C'est vide, buddy. But what bothers me is that Agnes Martin, who paints (or used to paint. Lamentably, she stopped work in 1967) six-foot square canvases composed of nothing more than criss-cross lines like those on graph paper, is having a show at the Robert Elkon Gallery, 1063 Madison Avenue at 81st Street, which I find, as always with Miss Martin's work, an unalleviated delight.

Perhaps it is only that Mr. Ryman's work looks easily dashed off while Miss Martin's is obviously the result of loving, arduous, conscientious and highly analytical mastery. But for now, do you mind if I let it go by saying that if Robert Ryman never painted another thing I would regard it as a commendable saving of canvas, paint, critics' ink and museum space, while the fact that Miss Martin no longer paints seems to me a very sad thing for contemporary American art.

Some day I'll figure out how to say exactly why.

Among other exhibitions: William Copley (Iolas, 15 East 55th Street): Mr. Copley,

[[image]] A pre-1920 baby carriage, by William Copley, is at Iolas [[\image]]

one our most engaging pranksters in the dadapop division, calls his new show "Mail Order" and has produced a full-color catalogue of baby carriages, thimbles, Brownie cameras, brass beds, baby bonnets and lots of things. It is all very pre-1920. And if you can't take camp you won't like it, since that flavor is pretty strong. But Mr. Cply, as he likes to be called, cultivates a deceptively relaxed manner (which extends to his curiously wavering draftsmanship) that makes this show consistently entertaining. In the oddest kind of way he seems to be muttering his best lines as throw-aways while he paints.

Dorothy Ruddick (Graham, 1014 Madison Avenue at 79th Street): Called "ink paintings" rather than drawings, these black-and-whites done in pen and wash do indeed have the textural depth and complexity of paintings. With the wildest and deepest and most turbulent of land-and-skyscapes as their sources, here are semi-abstractions that follow directly in the tradition of romantic exaggeration in the landscapes of - oh, Salvator Rosa, Magnasco and Gustave Doré, among others. Individually the drawings are so spectacular that I don't see why the artist chooses to combine them in multiple panels up to 10 in number. The richness of each drawing makes it self-sufficient, to say the least. To absorb more than half a dozen on a single visit to this show is impossible. Mrs. Ruddick is something special.

Robert Reid (Alonzo, 26 East 63d Street): Mr. Reid's painting-collages of beach subjects are accompanied by small water-colors that seem to be preparatory studies for them. Or is it the other way around, since the water-colors are so much better? The large versions are thin, as if the subjects didn't have the substance to withstand  enlargement. But the small versions are really charming - deft without being slick, gentle without being weak, poetic without being squashy. They are definitely worth a look.

Audrey Flack (French, 980 Madison Avenue, at 76th Street): Miss Flack says she wants to push her color to the point where it is as vivid as the exaggerations you get in lantern slides - and she's getting there, whether you like it or not. Working from photographs, she shows you, among other sculptures and monuments, the cathedral at Siena with its lovely creamy marble drenched in colors that make it seem to have been modeled from frozen strawberry, lime, lemon, grape and orange soda pop. Well, it all makes for a certain kind of intensification.

Geoffrey Norfolk (de Nagy, 29 West 57th Street): Big cutouts in metallic-surfaced plastic cloth hanging loose on the wall and distinguished by a really extraordinary lack of invention. The nadir.