978-1572305441

42 A MIND APART
even if they do it over and over. Of that there is no doubt. Why should it
give them so much pleasure? These fascinations and circumscribed interests
are almost like an addiction, but an addiction to perception, to
detail, to pattern and rhythm. In some sense, form, line, color, repetition,
and movement are addictive for the person with autism and AS,
but not addictive in the same way that other people become addicted to
alcohol or certain drugs. That is the key mystery that resists explanation
and, I suspect, will do so until we have a better understanding of the
brain systems involved and the connection between the frontal lobes
and the reward center of the brain.
* * *
I remember having a free afternoon in San Francisco some years
ago and deciding to visit the art gallery. There was an exhibition featuring
Robert Ryman, an artist who paints in the minimalist tradition. I
had never heard of him, but with nothing better to do, I ventured inside.
I was soon completely dismayed. The entire show consisted of
hundreds of white paintings: big white paintings, small white paintings,
nothing but white paint. This is ridiculous, I thought. This guy is pulling
my leg. White paintings indeed! Modern art at its worst. Anybody
could do this.
I soon noticed, though, that each painting was in fact subtly different.
The size of the paintings ranged from quite large to quite small, but
the brushwork also varied from painting to painting. Sometimes a large
brush was used, sometimes a small one. Sometimes you could see the
canvas showing through; at other times the entire surface was covered.
Sometimes there were fasteners, or bits of white tape adhering to the
picture; at other times the paintings seemed to hang in the air by themselves.
Sometimes the paint was thickly laid on, sometimes only very
thinly. In fact, once I paid attention to these details, the paintings displayed
an almost infinite variety of aspects. It soon became fun to see all
the ways the painter could vary the same details and what effect he
could achieve in doing so. After a while I became amazed at the extraordinary
richness of the paintings and stood in wonder before his achievement!
What a paradox, hundreds of white paintings, each one very different.
Obviously this artist was never bored with painting white. It was
the physicality of the paint he was interested in, its thickness, the brush
strokes, the texture, the size of the canvas, and so on. There was no figure
and ground as there is with most paintings, no near and far, no