|
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bridget Riley
1931 born in London
lives and works in London
Oval Movement within Discs, 1964
Gouache on squared paper
34 x 34 cm |
 |
|
|
Compared with Riley’s works from the same period using black and white waves and stripes, which often overtax the eye, this study is almost modest. Twenty-five black circles are distributed regularly on the paper in a square. Each of these circles contains a lens-shaped oval that has been left empty, and which in the first row has been tilted from the vertical by 45 degrees to the left, and in the last row turned from a 45-degree angle back to the vertical. The three rows in between seem to accompany this development by intermediary stages. The overall result is an impression of a gently curving motion that travels through the entire picture.
Despite the obvious precision with which the angle of inclination has been worked out for these ovals, the movement in this picture is neither clear nor even fluid. Consequently it is more correct to say that the picture is precisely composed about the diagonal travelling from upper left to lower right - in such a way that the ovals along each diagonal are all at the same angle, and that the angles change through 90 degrees from the vertical, which runs along the central diagonal. That an impression of motion is nevertheless engendered is as inexplicable as the fact that on lengthier study, the individual circles with their ovals seem to change in both colour and intensity. Anyone who initially thought they were following a homogeneous motion will now jump in an uncoordinated way from one circle to the next in ever-new patterns of movement.
Visual experiences of this kind are typical of Riley’s oeuvre as a whole; unlike most of her contemporaries, she is able to save the »Op« in Op Art from being simply reduced to tricks, and channel it into what Riley refers to as »the pleasure of sight«. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
