13.04.2021 Views

Bridget Riley - Measure for Measure

Transform your PDFs into Flipbooks and boost your revenue!

Leverage SEO-optimized Flipbooks, powerful backlinks, and multimedia content to professionally showcase your products and significantly increase your reach.

1


2


3


4


BRIDGET RILEY


BRIDGET RILEY<br />

MEASURE FOR MEASURE<br />

NEW DISC PAINTINGS<br />

Essay by Éric de Chassey<br />

Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris<br />

Holzwarth Publications


4 Study <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 1, 2016, acrylic on polyester, 51 x 51 cm


5


6 Study <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 16, 2017, acrylic on polyester, 51 x 51 cm


7


8 Study <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 18, 2017, acrylic on polyester, 51 x 51 cm


9


10 Study <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 19, 2017, acrylic on polyester, 51 x 51 cm


11


12<br />

Installation view, Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris 2017: Study <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 16, 2017; Study <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 1, 2016; <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 18, 2017;<br />

<strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 19, 2017; <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 16, 2017; <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 1, 2016


14<br />

Installation views, Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris 2017: Study <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 18, 2017; Study <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 19, 2017;<br />

Study <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 16, 2017; Study <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 1, 2016


<strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 19, 2017; <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 16, 2017; <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 1, 2016; <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 5 (Wall Painting), 2017<br />

15


16


THE PLEASURES OF PERCEPTION<br />

Éric de Chassey<br />

Georges Seurat, The Bridge<br />

at Courbevoie, 1887–1888,<br />

oil on canvas, 46.5 x 55.3 cm.<br />

The Courtauld Gallery,<br />

London<br />

<strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong>, Copy after<br />

‘The Bridge at Courbevoie’<br />

by Georges Seurat, 1959,<br />

oil on canvas, 71.1 x 91.4 cm.<br />

Private collection<br />

In 1959, <strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong> copied Georges Seurat’s painting The Bridge at Courbevoie<br />

(1887–1888; p. 16). In 2017, she was copying Seurat’s painting The Couple (1884; p. 18).<br />

In both cases, she was working from a reproduction; in both cases, she was diverging<br />

from the original in a conscious way: in 1959, by changing the dimensions and <strong>for</strong>mat,<br />

as well as adding new colours; in 2017, by starting from a slightly hued ground instead<br />

of a white canvas. One should note that there is hardly more chronological distance<br />

between Seurat’s Bridge at Courbevoie and <strong>Riley</strong>’s than there is between <strong>Riley</strong>’s first<br />

copy and her more recent one. In the meantime, she has become a renowned abstract<br />

painter and her knowledge of the French artist has become much deeper (just as the<br />

bibliography on his work has been expanding immensely, in sync with the number of<br />

exhibitions devoted to it). And while her own paintings at the time of her 1959 copy<br />

were versions of what she could grasp and use from her predecessor’s, they are now<br />

the result of a lifelong engagement with abstraction and painting reduced to its essentials,<br />

not looking much like Seurat’s. I saw the 2017 copy – alongside several other studies<br />

from Seurat – in <strong>Riley</strong>’s studio at the same time as I first saw <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 1<br />

(2016; p. 37), a square painting composed of sixty-one discs of the same size in three<br />

greyed secondary colours (off-green, off-violet and off-orange), arranged according to<br />

a tight and regular grid of eleven lines and columns, spaced on an immaculate white<br />

background. It is part of a series of Disc Paintings (2016–2017), along with other paintings<br />

and wall works that use the same devices in various combinations of rectangular and<br />

square grids, always with the same three colours. This series is as much a result of <strong>Riley</strong><br />

looking one more time at Seurat – especially in the context of the exhibition explicitly<br />

titled <strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong>: Learning from Seurat that took place at the Courtauld Gallery from<br />

September 2015 to January 2016 – as it is a new exploration of the visual effects obtained<br />

by the repetition on a limited surface of discs which vary only in colour.<br />

*<br />

I won’t go into too many details on <strong>Riley</strong>’s relationship with Seurat, as it has been aptly<br />

covered, recently by Karen Serres and Barnaby Wright 1 , as well as by Richard Shiff 2 . <strong>Riley</strong><br />

herself devoted several essays to the artist and gave interviews on his effect on her art<br />

and life. Suffice to say that the Disc Paintings renew her dialogue with Seurat’s methods<br />

while departing from his results and appearance. Her choice of colours does not obey<br />

Seurat’s principles of applying the laws of contrast of colour devised by Eugène Chevreul<br />

and Nicholas Ogden Rood; they partake of a new set of inquiries that are clearly <strong>Riley</strong>’s<br />

own, based on observation and a constant development of trying and learning from one<br />

work to the next, without adhering to external rules. The paintings which they compose<br />

are research canvases, as much as Seurat’s were toiles de recherches 3 , but they are not<br />

divisionist paintings as Seurat’s, even though they use separate monochrome dots as their<br />

17


main tool and thus could be called ‘pointilist’ (if one wished to think that a point can<br />

reach the size of a full disc). In order to be divisionist they would require at least four<br />

colours and not three. I know of only one instance where Seurat uses the same triad of<br />

violet, orange and green, albeit in a saturated state and with the violet closer to blue: it<br />

is the background in Study <strong>for</strong> ‘Le Chahut’ (1889–1890; above). But there, the colours are<br />

juxtaposed in such a way as to create various areas differentiated by their dominance<br />

of one tone against the others and, as Robert Herbert has noted, they ‘throb to the<br />

rhythms of contrasts with the light or dark of the figures’ of the dancers and orchestra<br />

members. 4 In <strong>Riley</strong>’s paintings, the colours, strictly equal in value (if you look at black<br />

and white reproductions, they appear uni<strong>for</strong>mly grey and white), are here on their own<br />

terms, contrasting only with the white that supports and separates them as a ‘neutral<br />

vehicle’. 5 They remain discrete and distinct, although they take part in linear rhythms<br />

and, through their accented repetition, in the global squares or rectangles that they<br />

compose. In so doing, they are, in a way, more faithful to Chevreul’s advice to painters<br />

than Seurat’s: ‘The qualities peculiar to painting in flat tints are: – Purity of outline;<br />

Regularity and elegance of <strong>for</strong>ms; Beautiful colours properly assorted... Simplicity in<br />

the whole, so as to render clear and distinct view easy.’ 6 (The passage I just omitted<br />

from my quote – ‘whenever opportunity permits, the most vivid and most contrasting<br />

colours may be advantageously employed’ – might constitute a next step.)<br />

As Seurat applied on his canvases brushstrokes of simultaneous complementary<br />

colours that were called by each previous tone so that a general harmony could<br />

be reached, <strong>Riley</strong> reaches her own harmony through carefully selecting the number<br />

of circles of each colour, so that, in the final compositions, neither of them dominates,<br />

even if, in general, there are more violet circles than green and orange ones. She<br />

controls the amount and saturation of each tone so that, contrary to what happens in<br />

Seurat’s paintings, they don’t produce contrasting colours. When viewed from certain<br />

distances, they produce what could be called contrasting shapes and lights, that is, white<br />

discs of the same size as the coloured ones, as if the whole composition were made of<br />

a close juxtaposition and sparkling of circles, some coloured (and material), some uncoloured<br />

(and transient) – of pure light so to speak, such as can be experienced in nature<br />

Georges Seurat, The Couple,<br />

1884, oil on canvas,<br />

81 x 65 cm. Fitzwilliam<br />

Museum, Cambridge<br />

Georges Seurat, Study <strong>for</strong><br />

‘Le Chahut’, 1889–1890,<br />

oil on canvas, 21.8 x 15.8 cm.<br />

The Courtauld Gallery,<br />

London<br />

18


in our mind and in our eyes. 7 *<br />

when a blazing light discolours everything and leaves only some hints of what they are<br />

in other situations, here rendered permanent through paint. This sensation is particularly<br />

striking when you look successively at the Studies <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> (2016–2017;<br />

pp. 5–11) and at the final paintings of the same <strong>for</strong>mat (as well as at the murals from<br />

the same series; pp. 34–45). The polyester on which the <strong>for</strong>mer are painted, as well as<br />

the white margin that surrounds the composition and their smaller dimensions, yield<br />

very animated spaces, which nevertheless never destroy the general sense of harmony<br />

and calm; whereas the latter, painted on a medium-size linen, and without margins, look<br />

more stable at first glance, but then acquire some animation, be<strong>for</strong>e returning to a state<br />

of stasis, albeit one that results from an equilibrium of tensions and subtly registers these<br />

Deny 2, 1967,<br />

acrylic emulsion on<br />

canvas, 217.2 x 217.2 cm.<br />

Tate, London<br />

This difference (to which you could add the first studies on paper <strong>for</strong> the recent series,<br />

from 2015) is a clear testimony that <strong>Riley</strong> does not look only at the art of other artists but<br />

also creates her own works in order to learn from them by making them. In 1970, she<br />

stated: ‘My direction is continually conditioned by my responses to the particular work in<br />

progress at any given moment. I am articulating the potentialities latent in the premise<br />

I have selected to work from’ 8 – and has since remained true to this statement. As she<br />

does not actually paint the final versions but lets her assistants do so, she learns primarily<br />

19


y looking at them, thus experiencing what we, as viewers, will do when the works are<br />

finished and exhibited. Just as Seurat established his ‘basis’ in each painting and proceeded<br />

from there to the next one (the writer Émile Verhaeren described how ‘in front<br />

of his annual production … he showed the results that he had reached, the clear certitudes,<br />

what he called “the basis” [la base]’ 9 ), she starts each of her paintings ‘from a basis’,<br />

as she also calls it, a concrete one in each case, as well as a broader one, constituted by<br />

her own previous works and by the conscious decision to use only limited means,<br />

completely abstract, in each new work.<br />

One of her most famous statements reads: ‘I work “from” something rather than<br />

“towards” something.’ 10 During her whole life, <strong>Riley</strong> has been learning as much from<br />

herself as from looking at other artists: the Disc Paintings are thus less the results of<br />

a dialogue with Seurat than embodiments of what she learned through creating each of<br />

her own works, of what she has been learning by looking anew at her own older paintings,<br />

and of a new strand of questions that she is asking herself, in painting, and which will<br />

lead to further paintings.<br />

*<br />

<strong>Riley</strong> has used discs since the early 1960s – as one shape amongst the many she had at<br />

her disposal since ‘<strong>for</strong>ms such as triangles, squares, circles, rhomboids etc. were no<br />

longer burdened by the heavy load of associations and symbolic overtones which they<br />

had carried in the 20s and 30s... They were simple <strong>for</strong>ms without any pretensions, in a<br />

condition <strong>for</strong> working with.’ 11 But they disappeared from her paintings on canvas in 1967<br />

(after Deny 2; p. 19). Except in some studies on paper from 1970–1971 (the Circles Colour<br />

Structure Studies, see e.g. Scale Study Ochre Cerise and Turquoise in Closed Discs, 1970;<br />

above), which never made it into a fully realised painting, and a small, exceptional series<br />

of paintings of 2011 (Two Yellows, Composition with Circles; p. 21), they were always<br />

colourless – at most variations from black to white, through a diversity of greys. In most<br />

cases, they were actually not discs, but circles or ovals that changed direction or were<br />

superimposed on each other to create visual patterns that registered disappearance and<br />

Scale Study Ochre<br />

Cerise and Turquoise<br />

in Closed Discs, 1970,<br />

gouache and pencil<br />

on paper, 30.5 x 66.4 cm.<br />

Private collection<br />

20


Two Yellows, Composition with Circles 2, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 112 x 112 cm. Private collection<br />

21


eappearance of an initial shape, sometimes stabilised as full circles or discs, only to be<br />

trans<strong>for</strong>med again (in the case of Black to White Discs [1962; above], <strong>for</strong> instance, composed<br />

of the repetition of the same shape, one loses the sense of this repetition through<br />

the gradations of greys to which it is submitted).<br />

White Discs 1 and 2 (1964; pp. 23, 24) are striking exceptions, and they might help<br />

us understand what is at stake in the Disc Paintings. They are made of black discs of three<br />

sizes, apparently aleatory but in fact organised in a diagonal grid according to the same<br />

progression of sizes, interrupted by gaps that the eye, once it has registered the logics<br />

of the initial schema, fills with the black discs that should have been there if there had<br />

been no disruption, while seeing white discs in absentia. Maurice de Sausmarez commented<br />

that ‘the three sizes of discs have been carefully selected to generate different<br />

weights of after-image’. 12 In the Disc Paintings, size variation has been replaced by colour<br />

variation, so that the white after-images all have the same weight and compose a more<br />

homogeneous field, which plays against the chromatic variation of the three tones<br />

(already muted and played down by the choice of a greyed variant): each <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong><br />

<strong>Measure</strong> painting is thus a tour de <strong>for</strong>ce in mastering the chromatic divergences, so that<br />

they don’t rip apart the unity of a composition in establishing diversity into unity, and<br />

vice versa. <strong>Riley</strong> had tried to do so in the Circles Colour Structure Studies 1970/71 through<br />

the concentric enclosure of smaller discs inside larger circles, explaining then: ‘It is<br />

Black to White Discs,<br />

1962, synthetic emulsion<br />

on canvas, 178 x 178 cm.<br />

Private collection<br />

22


White Discs 1, 1964,<br />

synthetic emulsion<br />

on board, 132 x 132 cm.<br />

Private collection<br />

very important that each <strong>for</strong>m finally relinquishes its separateness in the whole. It must<br />

be fully absorbed. So while it is necessary in the early stages to analyse each unit, my aim<br />

is to enable it to release sufficient energy to precipitate its dissolution in totality.’ 13 This<br />

encircling was enough to establish diversity without letting it go astray, as already proven<br />

against the extreme regularity of the placement of black and white concentric circles in<br />

Dilated Centres (1963; p. 25). The <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> series, as well as the wall painting<br />

Cosmos in Christchurch Art Gallery (2016–2017; pp. 26–27), are proof that <strong>Riley</strong> is now<br />

able, through careful and intuitive placement of each greyed colour in an extremely<br />

regular composition made of identical shapes, to work with separate <strong>for</strong>ms that never<br />

relinquish their identity while never destroying the unity of the whole. On the contrary,<br />

the coloured circles, through a combination of regular repetition and specific variation,<br />

build up that unity from their separateness (just as they did in the black and white works<br />

of 2013–2015, based on irregular triangles 14 ).<br />

The grid is here the privileged instrument of this unity through diversity. <strong>Riley</strong><br />

has pointed out that Mondrian’s Compositions with Grid from 1918–1919 seemed unsatisfactory<br />

to him because ‘the verticals and horizontals cancelled each other; the result was<br />

confused, the structure was lost’. 15 But once, when teaching, she asked her first year<br />

students to copy Composition with Grid 9: Checkerboard Composition with Light Colours<br />

(1919; p. 28). 16 The results were of such interest to the students that the third-year class<br />

23


asked that <strong>Riley</strong> might also set them the same task on her next visit. The new Disc Paintings<br />

use the grid as a basis to justify and organise the placement of the discs as a regular<br />

structure, which is made both more implicit (it appears as such only in the preliminary<br />

studies on paper) and more <strong>for</strong>ceful through the amount of white that separates each<br />

disc from its neighbours and thus separates the grid as an underlying structure that we<br />

feel, and the discs as the regularly paced <strong>for</strong>ms that we see. Even when, as in the 2017<br />

rectangular Wall Painting shown at Galerie Max Hetzler in Paris (pp. 44–45), the regularity<br />

of placement of the discs is broken down, the underlying orthogonal grid is still perceptible,<br />

established by the orthogonal borders. But it also becomes explicitly combined with a<br />

diagonal grid, which encompasses the lapses in the regular placement of the discs, just as<br />

it did in White Discs. In fact, in all the recent Disc Paintings, even when each crossing of<br />

the implicit lines is filled by discs, as in the wall painting Cosmos or the <strong>Measure</strong> to<br />

<strong>Measure</strong> paintings on canvas, these two combined grids are there to be experienced, both<br />

through their roles as underlying structures and as orthogonal and diagonal lines built by<br />

the adjacent placement of discs of the same colour (this never happens <strong>for</strong> the green<br />

discs, which always remain isolated). It is this grid that enables the discs to be both<br />

discrete images and part of a global composition of which they are the elementary basis.<br />

White Discs 2, 1964,<br />

synthetic emulsion<br />

on board, 104 x 99 cm.<br />

Private collection<br />

24


Dilated Centres, 1963,<br />

synthetic emulsion on<br />

canvas, 167.5 x 167.5 cm.<br />

Private collection<br />

In the square <strong>for</strong>mat of the <strong>Measure</strong> to <strong>Measure</strong> paintings and the two contemporary<br />

square wall paintings, there is no privileged direction, even if, because of the<br />

numbers of discs chosen, there is always a centre disc. Depending on the way I look<br />

at the painting, it appears centrifugal or centripetal (the square <strong>for</strong>mat also ensures that<br />

there is no spilling of the image onto the borders, that is to say the mind does not continue<br />

what it has learned inside the motif). It establishes a relationship to the body of the<br />

viewer: if I come close, I see most discs as a peripheral halo; if I step away, it per<strong>for</strong>ms<br />

as a picture (un tableau). The horizontal rectangular murals (especially the one that was<br />

installed at Galerie Max Hetzler) are much less centred, and they veer between stability<br />

and instability, agitation and harmony, anxiety and composure, depending on the way and<br />

the moment we look at them. The discs bump and bang, as if they were billiard balls or<br />

atoms, although fully bidimensional, and then they seem to be creating static patterns<br />

that our gaze isolates and combines to build a global field. They model organised randomness<br />

or random organisation, which is very much like our lives: no centre, no centres,<br />

except in the sense that each disc always reads as a centre <strong>for</strong> our vision, around which<br />

the surrounding discs organise themselves; only axes.<br />

It could be intuited that the use of greyed variations on the secondary colours<br />

in the 2016–2017 Disc Paintings stems from a lesson learned from looking at Mondrian’s<br />

Composition with Grid 9: Checkerboard with Light Colours, which similarly used muted<br />

25


26 Painting Cosmos, 2016–2017, with Verticals graphite (Green and Painting), acrylic on plaster 2006, Öl wall, auf 148.2 Leinwand x 460.2 / oil cm. on Installation linen, 194,4 view, x 388 Christchurch cm Art Gallery, 2017


27


variations on the primaries, and assessing how it was successful instead of constituting<br />

a dead-end (one could also cite as lessons several plates of Chevreul’s Laws of Contrast<br />

of Colour, which are grids of coloured dots on a white background 17 ). Most certainly, it is<br />

in fact a return to the previous use of this triad of colours in one of <strong>Riley</strong>’s own earlier<br />

works, Vapour (1970; p. 30). 18<br />

<strong>Riley</strong> deemed this painting sufficiently relevant to her current needs to rework<br />

it in 2009 (Vapour 2; p. 31), but it had remained a hapax in her whole output. In Vapour,<br />

as Robert Kudielka has shown, each colour was constantly affected and trans<strong>for</strong>med<br />

by the effect of the twisting of narrower stripes inside vertical bands: ‘This… crossing<br />

(called in <strong>Riley</strong>’s studio parlance ‘colour-twist’) effectively destabilises the colour<br />

identities because the supporting stripes, as they taper into acute points, can no longer<br />

protect the particular colour they carry against the influence of neighbouring hues.’ 19<br />

Here, they are to be seen <strong>for</strong> themselves, as agents that create a general sensation of<br />

vapour. <strong>Riley</strong> described the sensation it had in Vapour: ‘The fugitive quality of something<br />

which is obscure or difficult to penetrate. A vapour or mist veils or hides something.<br />

It de-materialises the material and has a beauty all of its own.’ 20 Here, as she herself<br />

points out, the discs ‘release light into the surrounding areas.’ 21 The vapour is both in<br />

the discrete <strong>for</strong>ms that compose the painting (albeit without them being anything but<br />

a flat, depersonalised, shape) and emanates from the whole picture. It is something that<br />

would be difficult to experience in nature, except in very extreme states, and is thus<br />

entirely pictorial – the creation of a new world. A world created by the discretion of<br />

colours and the discreteness of the discs, which anchor us into the painting and gently<br />

lead us into the vast riches and pleasures of perception, a-proportionate to the simplicity<br />

of the means used by <strong>Riley</strong>.<br />

Piet Mondrian, Composition<br />

with Grid 9: Checkerboard<br />

Composition with<br />

Light Colours, 1919, oil<br />

on canvas, 68 x 106 cm.<br />

Haags Gemeentemuseum,<br />

The Hague<br />

28


1<br />

See Karen Serres and Barnaby Wright, ‘<strong>Riley</strong> and Seurat: An Introduction’, in <strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong>: Learning from Seurat,<br />

exh. cat., London: The Courtauld Gallery / Ridinghouse 2015, pp. 9–23.<br />

2<br />

Richard Shiff, ‘Our Instinct Enhanced’, in <strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong>: Cosmos, exh. cat., Christchurch: Christchurch Art Gallery<br />

Te Puna o Waiwhetu 2017, pp. 29–38.<br />

3<br />

Émile Verhaeren, ‘Georges Seurat’ [1891], Sensations d’art, François-Marie Deyrolle (ed.), Paris: Librairie Séguier<br />

1989, p. 214.<br />

4<br />

Robert L. Herbert, Georges Seurat 1859–1891, exh. cat., New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1991, p. 347.<br />

5<br />

The whiteness of the background here plays the same role as the stripe pattern that <strong>Riley</strong> previously used, about<br />

which she stated: ‘Colour energies need a virtually neutral vehicle if they are to develop uninhibitedly. The repeated<br />

strip seems to meet these conditions.’ <strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong>, ‘Conversation’ [1972], in Robert Kudielka, Robert Kudielka on<br />

<strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong>: Essays and interviews since 1972, London: Ridinghouse 2014, p. 30.<br />

6<br />

Eugène Chevreul, The Laws of Contrast of Colour, translated from the French by John Spanton, London: Routledge<br />

1861, p. 218.<br />

7<br />

It should be emphasised that each painting created by <strong>Riley</strong> has its own size; the effects it creates are dependent<br />

on its specificity. The same composition on a different size is completely different in its effect on the viewer: this is<br />

exactly what does not happen with the circle compositions of John Armleder or Damien Hirst’s Spot Paintings.<br />

8<br />

<strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong>, quoted in Maurice de Sausmarez, <strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong>, London: Studio Vista 1970, p. 91.<br />

9<br />

Émile Verhaeren, op. cit. (note 3), p. 215: ‘En face de ses œuvres annuelles … il indiquait les résultats obtenus,<br />

les certitudes nettes, ce qu’il appelait “la base”.’<br />

10<br />

<strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong>, quoted in Maurice de Sausmarez, op. cit. (note 8), p. 20.<br />

11<br />

<strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong>, ‘Conversation’ [1972], op. cit. (note 5), p. 30.<br />

12<br />

Maurice de Sausmarez, op. cit. (note 8), p. 12.<br />

13<br />

<strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong>, ‘Conversation’ [1972], op. cit. (note 5), p. 32.<br />

14<br />

<strong>Riley</strong> has stated that Cosmos grew out of Cascando, a large black and white painting from 2015: ‘I changed<br />

the unit, a triangle, to a disc.’ ‘In the Studio: <strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong> in conversation with Paul Moorhouse’, in <strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong>:<br />

Cosmos, op. cit. (note 2), p. 21.<br />

15<br />

Piet Mondrian [1943], quoted in <strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong>, ‘Mondrian Perceived’ [1997], in Robert Kudielka (ed.), The Eye’s<br />

Mind: <strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong>, Collected Writings 1965–2009, London: Thames & Hudson 2009, p. 279.<br />

16<br />

See ‘<strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong> in Conversation with Jenny Harper’, ibid., p. 173.<br />

17<br />

In the Imprimerie Nationale version of Chevreul’s treatise from 1889, plate 28 is entirely made of rows of<br />

off-green, off-yellow and ochre-grey (symbolising white) dots.<br />

18<br />

Richard Shiff has noted that ‘be<strong>for</strong>e devising the greyed variant of the triad green/orange/violet, <strong>Riley</strong> had used<br />

this grouping in a saturated state in Gamelan (1969) and Orient 1 (1970).’ Richard Shiff, ‘Our Instinct Enhanced’,<br />

op. cit. (note 2), p. 39, note 4.<br />

19<br />

Robert Kudielka, ‘Chromatic and Plastic Interaction’ [1996], in Robert Kudielka on <strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong>, op. cit. (note 5),<br />

p. 166.<br />

20<br />

<strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong> [2014], quoted in Richard Shiff, ‘The Unaccountable’, in <strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong>: The Stripe Paintings<br />

1961–2014, exh. cat., London: David Zwirner 2014, p. 34.<br />

21<br />

<strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong>, ‘In the Studio’, op. cit. (note 14), p. 23.<br />

29


30 Vapour, 1970, acrylic emulsion on canvas, 96 x 90 cm. Private collection


Vapour 2, 2009, acrylic on linen, 152.2 x 130 cm. Private collection<br />

31


32<br />

Installation view, Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris 2017: <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 16, 2017; <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 1, 2016; <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 5 (Wall Painting), 2017<br />

Pages 34–35: <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 5 (Wall Painting), 2017, graphite and acrylic on plaster wall, 190.5 x 190.5 cm


34


35


36 <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 1, 2016, acrylic on linen, 93.6 x 93.6 cm


37


38 <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 16, 2017, acrylic on linen, 93.6 x 93.6 cm


39


40 <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 18, 2017, acrylic on linen, 93.6 x 93.6 cm


41


42 <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 19, 2017, acrylic on linen, 93.6 x 93.6 cm


43


44 Untitled Measue <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> (Wall Painting), 2017, graphite and acrylic on plaster wall, 171.6 x 435.6 cm


45


46<br />

Installation view, Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris 2017: <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 18, 2017; <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 19, 2017; <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 16, 2017;<br />

<strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 1, 2016


LIST OF EXHIBITED WORKS<br />

<strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 1, 2016<br />

acrylic on linen<br />

93.6 x 93.6 cm<br />

pages 13, 15, 32, 37, 46<br />

<strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 5 (Wall Painting), 2017<br />

graphite and acrylic on plaster wall<br />

190.5 x 190.5 cm<br />

pages 15, 33, 34–35<br />

<strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 16, 2017<br />

acrylic on linen<br />

93.6 x 93.6 cm<br />

pages 13, 15, 32, 39, 46<br />

Study <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 19, 2017<br />

acrylic on polyester<br />

51 x 51 cm<br />

pages 11, 14<br />

Untitled <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong><br />

(Wall Painting), 2017<br />

graphite and acrylic on plaster wall<br />

171.6 x 435.6 cm<br />

pages 44–45<br />

<strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 18, 2017<br />

acrylic on linen<br />

93.6 x 93.6 cm<br />

pages 41, 46<br />

<strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 19, 2017<br />

acrylic on linen<br />

93.6 x 93.6 cm<br />

pages 12–13, 15, 43, 46<br />

Study <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 1, 2016<br />

acrylic on polyester<br />

51 x 51 cm<br />

pages 5, 12, 14<br />

Study <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 16, 2017<br />

acrylic on polyester<br />

51 x 51 cm<br />

pages 7, 12, 14<br />

Study <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong> 18, 2017<br />

acrylic on polyester<br />

51 x 51 cm<br />

pages 9, 12, 14<br />

47


Published on the occasion of the exhibition <strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong>:<br />

<strong>Measure</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Measure</strong>. New Disc Paintings at Galerie Max Hetzler,<br />

57, rue du Temple, Paris, 18 October–25 November 2017.<br />

Text: Éric de Chassey<br />

Copy editing: Lutz Eitel<br />

Design: Hans Werner Holzwarth<br />

Photographs: Anna Arca (pp. 5, 7, 9, 11, 39, 41, 43); John Collie (pp. 26–27);<br />

Charles Duprat (pp. 12–15, 32–35, 44–46); Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd<br />

(pp. 16 bottom, 20–25, 30, 31, 37), John Webb (p. 19)<br />

Lithographs: Bildpunkt, Berlin<br />

Production: Medialis, Berlin<br />

Reference images: Georges Seurat, The Bridge at Courbevoie, 1887–1888,<br />

Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London, UK/Bridgeman<br />

Images (p. 16 top); Georges Seurat, The Couple, 1884, Joseph S. Martin/ARTOTHEK<br />

(p. 18 left); Georges Seurat, Study <strong>for</strong> ‘Le Chahut’, 1889–1890, Samuel Courtauld<br />

Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London, UK/Bridgeman Images (p. 18 right);<br />

Piet Mondrian, Composition with Grid 9: Checkerboard Composition with Light<br />

Colours, 1919, Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, Netherlands/Bridgeman<br />

Images (p. 28)<br />

All works and photographs © <strong>Bridget</strong> <strong>Riley</strong> 2018, all rights reserved;<br />

with the exception of photographs taken by Bridgeman Images, John Collie,<br />

Charles Duprat, Joseph S. Martin/ARTOTHEK, John Webb<br />

Text © the author<br />

Copyright 2018 <strong>for</strong> this edition: Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris,<br />

Bleibtreustraße 45, d-10623 Berlin | 57, rue du Temple, f-75004 Paris<br />

and Holzwarth Publications, www.holzwarth-publications.de<br />

All rights reserved<br />

First edition 2018<br />

isbn 978-3-947127-06-1<br />

Printed in Germany


49


50<br />

Painting with Verticals (Green Painting), 2006, Öl auf Leinwand / oil on linen, 194,4 x 388 cm


51


ISBN 978-3-947127-06-1 / Printed in Germany<br />

52<br />

Painting with Verticals (Green Painting), 2006, Öl auf Leinwand / oil on linen, 194,4 x 388 cm

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!