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Bridget Riley: Recent Paintings 2014-2017
By Bridget Riley and Richard Shiff
Published by David Zwirner Books
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Table of Contents
About The Book
The quest for discovery through looking is the driving force of Bridget Riley’s work, as she has written: “More than anything else I want my paintings to exist on their own terms. That is to say they must stealthily engage and disarm you. There the paintings hang, deceptively simple—telling no tales as it were—resisting, in a well-behaved way, all attempts to be questioned, probed or stared at and then, for those with open eyes, serenely disclosing some intimations of the splendors to which pure sight alone has the key.”
This publication unfolds along the lines of Riley’s 2018 exhibition at David Zwirner, London. Beginning with an exploration of black-and-white equilateral triangles, Riley leads the viewer into an awareness of the ways in which a surface—wall or canvas—can affect a seemingly simple form: the triangle. While she demonstrates these subtle changes, Riley manipulates this form by bending its sides. At first sight the viewer may experience this as a breaking apart, but as one continues to look, serpentine movements appear, or large shadowy triangles, which advance and recede. These paintings constantly reinvent themselves through looking.
Riley is revisiting and developing works which she initiated over fifty years ago, as is shown here by the inclusion of Black to White Discs (1962/1965) in the exhibition. This diamond formation of discs, which graduates in tone from white to black and back again, offers a lead-in to her new body of work. In Cosmos and the Measure for Measure series, Riley recalls a group of subtly shaded colors used this time in discs. While the compositions remain fundamentally the same, the play of colors changes every time.
The exhibition ends with a surprisingly spacious wall painting that offers the viewer many delights, not least among them a dance of fugitive white lights. Here, Riley disarms the viewer, encouraging us once again in an adventure of discovery. In his essay, Richard Shiff explores Riley’s ability to give new life to basic forms as she invites the audience, any audience, to help participate in the painting.
This publication unfolds along the lines of Riley’s 2018 exhibition at David Zwirner, London. Beginning with an exploration of black-and-white equilateral triangles, Riley leads the viewer into an awareness of the ways in which a surface—wall or canvas—can affect a seemingly simple form: the triangle. While she demonstrates these subtle changes, Riley manipulates this form by bending its sides. At first sight the viewer may experience this as a breaking apart, but as one continues to look, serpentine movements appear, or large shadowy triangles, which advance and recede. These paintings constantly reinvent themselves through looking.
Riley is revisiting and developing works which she initiated over fifty years ago, as is shown here by the inclusion of Black to White Discs (1962/1965) in the exhibition. This diamond formation of discs, which graduates in tone from white to black and back again, offers a lead-in to her new body of work. In Cosmos and the Measure for Measure series, Riley recalls a group of subtly shaded colors used this time in discs. While the compositions remain fundamentally the same, the play of colors changes every time.
The exhibition ends with a surprisingly spacious wall painting that offers the viewer many delights, not least among them a dance of fugitive white lights. Here, Riley disarms the viewer, encouraging us once again in an adventure of discovery. In his essay, Richard Shiff explores Riley’s ability to give new life to basic forms as she invites the audience, any audience, to help participate in the painting.
Product Details
- Publisher: David Zwirner Books (November 20, 2018)
- Length: 96 pages
- ISBN13: 9781941701911
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Raves and Reviews
“A blast of pure psychedelic energy... The great shapeshifter rediscovers the hallucinogenic power of her youth, with dizzying works that turn perspective inside out.”
– Jonathan Jones, The Guardian
“Riley is a philosopher who is interested in perception – and nothing else. For her, a work of art is not a picture nor a political comment nor a splurge of self-expression. It is a way to explore seeing. If it does not leave you with your sense of the visible world shaken and reborn, what’s the point of it?”
– Jonathan Jones, The Guardian
“Like psychedelics for the puritanical, Bridget Riley’s work has utterly mind-altering power. Looking long enough at it makes the eyes and the mind perform bold gymnastic leaps, as we weave our perceptions into hers and see things that aren’t there as fact, but very much are there as viewers.”
– Emily Gosling, Creative Boom
“Riley's paintings seem to defy scholarly interpretation. Her central interest is visual sensation: through geometric repetition, tonal inversion, compression, and expansion, she's able to exploit what she calls ‘visual energy’ to produce striking optical phenomena.”
– Jake Malooley, Reader
“Bridget Riley’s work is utterly fascinating…”
– Maisie Skidmore, It’s Nice That
“Bridget Riley is the most important British painter of the modern age. Bacon? Freud? Hockney? None of those famous men took hold of the language of painting and remade it as she has.”
– Jonathan Jones, The Guardian
“Each painting is incredibly carefully planned, and deeply theoretically rigorous.”
– Samuel Spencer, The Culture Trip
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High Resolution Images
- Book Cover Image (jpg): Bridget Riley: Recent Paintings 2014-2017 Paper Over Board 9781941701911
