CURRENT
BRIDGET RILEY, 1964
Your eyes won't settle. That's the first thing. Black and white wavy lines, packed tight across the whole surface. That's all this painting is, technically. And still your visual system cannot get it to stay put. You know it isn't moving. It moves anyway. And Riley would want you to take that seriously. Not as a trick. As the whole subject. What happens in your body in front of this painting is the painting. She didn't paint the lines herself, by the way. Assistants executed them from her exact instructions. Critics used that against her. No hand, no feeling, just a scheme. But the hand was never really the point. The point is what the scheme does to you. That's why Riley matters. She turned sensation into structure. And in 1965, MoMA put work like this in The Responsive Eye. Huge crowds. Front pages. Suddenly Op Art was everywhere. Then, almost immediately, it got stolen. American fashion companies lifted Riley's look, in at least one case basically this exact visual experience, and started printing it on dresses. Department stores. Cocktail parties. The whole thing. She couldn't stop it. Which is kind of perfect, in a bleak way. A painting built to make your eyes lose their grip gets flattened into pattern and sold back as style. Riley just went back to the studio. And the lines are still moving.