Bridget Riley: Works 1981-2015: Works From 1981 - 2015 - Hardcover

Riley, Bridget; Shiff, Richard; Kudielka, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 194170123X ISBN 13: 9781941701232

Publisher: David Zwirner Books, 2016

Synopsis

Bridget Riley’s explorations of perception through form and color have made her into one of the most significant painters working today. Since the early 1960s, she has used elementary shapes―lines, circles, curves, and squares―to create visual experiences that immediately draw the viewer in, often triggering optical vibrations and illusions. More recently, Riley has shifted back to black and white in her large-scale paintings, marking a departure from her recent colored stripe paintings and a return to the palette of some of her earliest works.

Published on the occasion of her 2015 solo exhibition at David Zwirner, Bridget Riley: Works 1981–2015 presents paintings from the last thirty-four years of her career, including images of Rajasthan, a wall painting previously shown in Germany and England, and exhibited for the first time in New York. These dynamic reproductions begin with stripe paintings from the 1980s and end with a coda of sorts ―a return to black and white that ties back to her work from the 1960s, but bear traces of Riley’s deep engagement with color in the interim. As critic Éric de Chassey puts it in his essay for Riley’s 2015 catalogue with Galerie Max Hetzler: “The black-and-white paintings not only enter into a dialogue with the 1960s works, but take stock of every painting experience Riley has created during a long career.”

Also included is a selection of the artist’s works on paper; taken together, these complementary aspects of her practice over the past four decades reveal the astonishing variety she has achieved by developing and rediscovering different forms. An essay by art historian Richard Shiff helps contextualize the developments in Riley’s practice since the early 1980s, and further emphasizes her influence and lineage as a painter. Rounding out the publication are biographical notes by Robert Kudielka, one of the artist’s foremost critics. With a career spanning six decades, Bridget Riley remains one of the most exciting painters today, and Bridget Riley: Works 1981–2015 presents a selection of works from what may be her richest period to date.

About this title

About the Author

Bridget Riley was born in 1931 in London, where she currently lives and works. Educated at Goldsmiths College of Art and at the Royal College of Art in London, she has exhibited widely since her first solo exhibition in 1962. Among numerous group exhibitions, Riley participated in the 1968 Venice Biennial--where she won the international prize--and the 1986 Venice Biennial, as well as Documenta 4 in 1968 and Documenta 6 in 1977. Retrospectives of her work toured Europe and the world during the 70s, and she has exhibited work at institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and Tate Britain, London.

Robert Kudielka is an art historian and former Professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art at the University of the Arts, Berlin. He is the co-author with Bridget Riley of Paul Klee: The Nature of Creation, Works, 1914–1940 (2002) and author and editor of numerous books on Riley, including Robert Kudielka on Bridget Riley: Essays and interviews since 1972 (2005; revised and expanded edition, 2014) and The Eye’s Mind: Bridget Riley, Collected Writings 1965–2009 (2009).

?Richard Shiff is the Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art at The University of Texas at Austin, where he directs the Center for the Study of Modernism. His scholarly interests range broadly across the field of modern and contemporary art and theory, with publications that include Ce´zanne and the End of Impressionism (1984), Critical Terms for Art History (co-edited, 1996; second edition, 2003), Barnett Newman: A Catalogue Raisonne´ (co-authored, 2004), Doubt (2008), Between Sense and de Kooning (2011), and Ellsworth Kelly: New York Drawings 1954–1962 (2014). Artists featured in Shiff’s recent essays have included Mark Bradford, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Zeng Fanzhi, Ellen Gallagher, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Alex Katz, Per Kirkeby, Julie Mehretu, David Reed, Bridget Riley, Joel Shapiro, Keith Sonnier, Cy Twombly and Vincent van Gogh.

From the Back Cover

Bridget Riley’s explorations of perception through form and color have made her into one of the most significant painters working today. Since the early 1960s, she has used elementary shapes―lines, circles, curves, and squares―to create visual experiences that immediately draw the viewer in, often triggering optical vibrations and illusions. More recently, Riley has shifted back to black and white in her large-scale paintings, marking a departure from her colored stripe paintings and a return to the palette of some of her earliest works. Published on the occasion of her 2015 solo exhibition at David Zwirner, Bridget Riley: Works from 1980–2015 presents paintings from the last thirty-five years of her career, including images of Rajasthan, a wall painting previously shown in Germany and England, and exhibited for the first time in New York. These dynamic reproductions begin with stripe paintings from the 1980s and end with a coda of sorts ―a return to black and white that ties back to her work from the 1960s, but bear traces of Riley’s deep engagement with color in the interim. Also included is a selection of the artist’s works on paper; taken together, these aspects of her practice reveal the variety she has achieved by developing and rediscovering different forms. An essay by art historian Richard Shiff helps contextualize the developments in Riley’s practice, and emphasizes her influence and lineage as a painter. Rounding out the publication are biographical notes by Robert Kudielka, one of the artist’s foremost critics. With a career spanning six decades, Riley remains one of the most exciting painters today, and this catalogue presents a selection of works from what may be her richest period to date.

Edition details

• Publisher: David Zwirner Books
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 194170123X
• ISBN 13: 9781941701232
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 96