Bøger af Bridget Riley

Bringing together essays by and interviews with British artist Bridget Riley, this volume represents her passionate and articulate engagement with colour, perception and art history. Divided into three sections, the writings reveal Riley's relationship to different topics over time, including the term 'abstract'; the influence of Georges Seurat and Paul Cézanne; the role of colour and painting throughout art history; the importance of perception and much more. The book includes interviews with preeminent art historians such as David Sylvester, Mel Gooding and Lynne Cooke, as well as in-depth studies of other artists: Piet Mondrian, Bruce Nauman and Georges Seurat.

Bridget Rileys Kunst speist sich aus dem Interesse der Künstlerin an Formen und Farben der Malereigeschichte, die sie von ihrer ursprünglichen Darstellungsfunktion trennt und so neue Klänge und Bedeutungen findet. Mit jeder Bildserie fügt sie ihrem Werk etwas hinzu - und in diesem Buch, bereits ihrem fünften bei Holzwarth Publications, begegnen wir den jüngsten Ergebnissen: Da sind die Intervals, bei denen sie breite horizontale Streifen in vergrauten Grün-, Violett-, Orange- und Türkistönen auf weißem Grund übereinander stellt. Die Anordnung folgt keiner mathematischen Regel: "Wenn klar geworden ist, dass es kein festes Prinzip hinter den Permutationen gibt", schreibt Éric de Chassey in seinem Essay, "können sich Geist und Auge auf die Harmonie des Gesamtbildes einlassen, die durch den Rhythmus der Veränderungen einzelner Elemente entsteht". Bilder der Serie Measure for Measure sind in ähnlichen Tönen gehalten, aber durch die Komposition in farbigen Kreisen haben sie einen luftigen, schwebenden Charakter, jede Farbe wirkt auch für sich allein. Diese neuen Arbeiten werden an allen drei Ausstellungsorten der Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin zu früheren Leinwänden und Wandmalereien seit 1984 in Beziehung gesetzt. Hier zeigt sich, dass Rileys Werke immer eine Bilanz dessen sind, was sie bereits erreicht hat, und gleichzeitig Vorarbeiten für künftige Bilder.

Renowned British artist Bridget Riley’s paintings have provoked powerful sensations through their formally taut, abstract compositions over the course of her more than six-decade career. In this new body of work, Riley returns to earlier ideas and takes them into further and surprising directions.As the artist has noted, “I am sometimes asked ‘What is your objective’ and this I cannot truthfully answer. I work ‘from’ something rather than ‘towards’ something. It is a process of discovery.” Since 1961, Riley has focused exclusively on seemingly simple geometric forms, such as lines, circles, curves, and squares, arrayed across a surface—whether a canvas, a wall, or paper—according to an internal logic. The resulting compositions actively engage the viewer, at times triggering sensations of vibration and movement. In the present selection, Riley advances her Measure for Measure series, her most extensive body of work to date, into a new, darker color palette—once again, changing the way we look and offering a powerful effect on our eyes.   This sense of dynamism was explored to great effect in the artist’s earliest black-and-white paintings, which established the basis of her enduring formal vocabulary. In 2020, after visiting her own earlier works at her retrospective exhibition organized by the National Galleries of Scotland, Riley returned to black-and-white lozenges, adjusting the orientation of each shape to create a new visual sensation. Published on the occasion of the 2021 exhibition at David Zwirner, London, this monograph features new scholarship on the artist by art historian Éric de Chassey, who looks at how Riley’s past, in addition to the history of art, has led to this body of work.

Here is a small retrospective of Riley's work, with a special focus on the last three decades, including studies, paintings and wall paintings.