Page 34 - Studio International - March 1967

Bridget Riley

Interviewed by David Sylvester

You're very conscious, of course, of the optical effects you want to distance, seem like pieces of reflecting steel, cut out and stuck to
present? the painting, shiny and light-catching. Was that part of the
Yes, but not entirely conscious. Though I can foresee intention?
certain things happening, it's such an enormous field that No, it wasn't.
things will always happen that you don't anticipate.
Secondly, there's a curious effect when you stand close to the
How often do you get optical effects which you completely failed painting of a thick grey mist or smoke between you and the
to anticipate and that you want to suppress? painting. Was that part of the intention?
Quite often. Sometimes I can control them. Sometimes I Yes ... obscuring, negating it.
can suppress them without damaging the rest. But, for
instance, in the painting called One, those echoes that What else was in your intention?
run up from the base and shatter the forms right up to To oppose a structural movement with a tonal movement,
the top—though they are necessary in three-quarters of to release increased colour through reducing the tonal
the painting, I don't want them at the top. But I cannot contrast. In the colour relationship of the darkest oval
get rid of them at the top without eliminating them with the ground, the change of colour is far more pro-
from the whole canvas altogether. They are a flaw, one nounced than it is between the lightest oval and the
that I have to accept. ground, where you get a tonal contrast—almost a black
and white relationship—happening instead, which knocks
What of Deny? It seems to me that two optical effects happen the colour down.
there. One is that the little ovals, when seen from a certain
Do you sometimes find that in the end an optical effect which
was not one that you anticipated in a painting turns out to be
the one that interests you most?
Sometimes. And sometimes I'll examine that one
separately, more fully in another situation.

You paint from drawings, and you usually make a number of
drawings for every painting, and a great many drawings which
don't lead directly to a painting. Are these ever drawings made
for the sake of making drawings, or are all your drawings made
with the idea of doing a painting?
They're always towards a painting. When I've selected a
unit which I'm thinking of using in a painting, I make this
unit visible, so that I can see its attendant problems
and its potential.

When the unit first comes into your mind do you already have an
idea of what sort of scale the painting is going to be on?
No. The scale comes from the physical thing, from the
visual statement.

During the making of the drawings?
Yes.

Bridget Riley's paintings are being exhibited at Richard Feigen, New
York, this April.
Born in 1931, Bridget Riley studied at Goldsmith's School of Art and
the Royal College of Art, and has taught at Hornsey, Loughborough and
Croydon Schools of Art. Her most recent London exhibition was at
Robert Fraser last year.