Talking Painting: Dialogues with twelve contemporary abstract painters
Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415-27629-2
This book is the result of research into contemporary abstraction and various theoretical positions deduced from its practice. Contributors included Arthur Danto, Andrew Benjamin, Peter Schjeldahl, David Joselit, Bernard Frize, Mary Heilmann, Jonathan Lasker, Shirley Kaneda, David Reed, Jessica Stockholder. This also connects more generally with an exploration of modernist abstraction and its legacies, refracted in recent practices through its reformulation within installation and other modes of working. Essentially, the work and its theoretical/historical complement re-examines the possibilities of thinking through 'non-representational' form, and the questions of meaning that arise from this.
This text was well received, Mike Dawson writing in Flux magazine, "David Ryan's insightful 'Talking Painting' will undoubtedly become a definitive addition to the abstract artist's theoretical armour [...] a definitive text in the making". Ryan provides a critical overview and interviews throughout the book. It has proved a useful source book for students at PhD and MA level.