2019
In a mesmerising lifetime retrospective, the great abstract painter takes simple forms and colours and sets them off in glorious perpetual motion.
The word “BRiley” – like some fortuitous fusion of “brilliant” and “wily” – appears on some of the most spectacular paintings in British art. This is Bridget Riley’s signature, tucked modestly round the edge of the canvas, and about the only aspect of her work that never changes. At 88, Riley is still finding new ways to dazzle and exhilarate the eyes and mind with the slenderest of means, each canvas a sustained revelation from a mind that remains forever young.
Take a recent work from her Measure for Measure series. At a distance, the coloured discs on the white substrate scintillate like sequins, even in their muted tones of purple, green and brown. Walk closer and the picture performs a new magic. Green dances against purple, which sparks against brown, until the discs seem to jump and shiver; each leaving an afterimage, moreover, where the whole surface seems alive with the glistening patter of raindrops on water.
A fourth colour appears in the next version: dull turquoise – and yet the day brightens. The painting has its own weather. This is a marvel considering all you’re looking at is an array of drab discs on white paint; more extraordinary still, that radiance seems to float free, transmitting its light to another work hanging alongside. Some of this is to do with the complex interplay of optics, colour and perception, of course, and with measurements of all kinds (Riley’s titles are always epigrammatic). But it is an effect scarcely seen in any other artist.