Page 28 - Studio International - July August 1971

Bridget Riley Bridget Riley
Detail of Punjab 1971
Cryla on canvas
David Thompson Coll : the artist

A Bridget Riley retrospective, shown earlier this
year in Germany and Italy, is at the Hayward
Gallery, London, from 21July to 5 September.

Riley's use of colour in the stripe-paintings is still, to protest that she is not being scientific but continually cross-checking between its edges
for many people, relatively 'new' and unfamiliar, intuitive), and Andrew Forge, in a recent article, (in-focus and analysable colour-structure) and
and in the complex and energetic painting/ has done a lot to redress the balance with a its centre (out-of-focus and unanalysable
viewer relationship which all her work demands, minutely observed description of what one colour-sensation). Each part of this two-way
unfamiliarity can distort one's response. Her actually sees and what the seeing feels like.2 process reinforces one's ability to arrive
paintings are of a kind which often seem to start Yet even here, I feel, there is still room to ultimately at an awareness of their
from a position of attack, and as long as the affirm that the stripe-paintings invite a reading, simultaneity. 4
spectator is still getting attuned to the idiom, he once one has got used to them, which can be In all this, the stripe-format itself is not the
tends to find that a certain optical aggressiveness as loud or as quiet as one likes. It is up to the essential. Stripes nowadays are a convenient,
is almost obtrusively characteristic of it. Riley spectator to adjust the volume, and his volume- efficient and relatively anonymous vehicle for
herself has often expressed some surprise about control is the distance from which he views the the artist's purpose—as much so (as Riley herself
this', and the opportunity of re-experiencing the painting. There is obviously a basic 'optimum' has said) as were at one time the apples and pears
early black-and-white paintings at the Hayward distance, which probably differs with different of still-life. They have become in the last few
makes it easier to understand why. Eight years or people. But there are also two less satisfactory years the favoured format for a good many
so ago, when these paintings were new, the usual but not irrelevent extremes—a too-near view painters who are primarily concerned with
response was to describe them in some way which is eyeball-shattering, and a too-far view colour, but that does not mean that the painters
physically and even painfully disorientating. By where all the colour-shimmers die down to an are of the same kind or that they use stripes in
now people are rather less frail. They have learned almost motionless grey. These extremes are the same way. Even apart from the obvious
how to cope, as spectators, with an unusually quite a distance apart, and between them one chord-structure of straightforward colour-
muscular kind of visual energy, and what one can choose one's own degree of sensation, and orchestration, the stripes in a Noland, a Gene
now gets from these paintings is a sensation even (in terms of colour) different sensations. Davis, a Kidner, a Molinari are all doing
much nearer to the artist's own original This in itself requires some qualification of different things, and in a Riley they are different
descriptions of it —as of something pleasurably the idea of aggressiveness. Many people resist again. In a Noland, for example, part of what
keen and astringent, giving strength to effects Riley's paintings because of what Bryan they are doing is to carry colour as vast,
which are surprisingly delicate and subtle. Robertson calls (though not disparagingly) directional bands across the field of vision in a
It is important to be aware of this, at least as their demand on 'our direct, involuntary way which is both extended gesture and an
a possibility, when approaching the stripe- participation'. 3 People don't like to feel they expression of the American sense of scale. In a
paintings. One is not used to the optical means are participating involuntarily. Or put another Davis, they are more like thin, vertical blocks in
(extremely energetic activation of some colours way, they don't like having to work too hard at an additive build-up of colour against colour to
in order to generate others) and so one is a painting, and these paintings demand to be produce weight and complexity by accumulation.
unprepared for the paradox of the actual result: worked at.They are basically structures for In a Riley, the stripes are in a way both less
namely, that for all the throbbing waves that making certain properties of colour visible, physical and in themselves less important; they
come off the surface, one is really experiencing which ask the spectator to exercise his powers of are not ultimately what one is looking at, and the
something ethereally insubstantial—the spectacle perceptual awareness. He can control (through colours are not being played against each other
of induced or irradiated colour which is as pale, distance) his threshold of tolerance, and by for any harmonic effect.
air-borne and opalescent as the merest blush of working at it he can even improve on his own Far from being any exercise in traditional
dawn light. It is a spectacle with such interesting perceptual performance—the painting contains colour-orchestration, what one is being led to
perceptual and physiological properties that within itself what Andrew Forge calls a is the possibility of seeing painted colour as
critics are easily side-tracked from just `miraculous meeting of physical sensation and light.5 The kind of colour which the paintings
experiencing the thing into analyzing how thought-determined system', and one tends to are about is not, say, some rather hard and
it is done (the source of Riley's continual need `improve' one's reading of the painting by curious (curious in terms of taste) triad of

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