Flickers of singularity: Ryman and Rauschenberg paint the diremption

Abstract

Although Reiner Schürmann describes and explicates the Greek, Latin and modern hegemonic phantasms through various linguistic and temporal conceptualizations, I argue that the white paintings of Robert Ryman and Robert Rauschenberg avoid the main fissure of self-consciousness that characterizes the phantasm of their time period and leap forward into the diremption. This is made possible through the realization of the limits of language, its relationality and its relationship to painting. Through an examination of Ryman’s body of work and Rauschenberg’s experimentation with White Paintings, I argue that it is possible to leap into a singularity and recognize its moment of diremption through perceptive experience rather than conceptualizing it through linguistic means.