CURRENT
BRIDGET RILEY, 1964
Look at this for a second. It won't stay put. Black and white lines, packed edge to edge, all moving together. Then right through the middle, everything buckles. Nothing on this board is moving. You know that. But it doesn't help. In 1965, a curator named William Seitz wrote that in front of this painting your eyes get "bombarded with pure energy." He wrote down what happens next, too. Pink. Gold. Blue. Which would be fine, except there is no color in this painting. Anywhere. Bridget Riley had a name for what she was after. Disturbance. So, okay. How do you make a painting that messes with somebody that badly? Riley could really paint. Which, for Riley, became a problem. She'd trained hard. She had the hand for it. And apparently that started to feel a little too easy. Years later she said: "I gave up painting because I could." Which is a hell of a thing to say when you're a painter. But then she explains it. "I had to find out what I could not do." So she starts taking the hand out of it. One line. Repeat it. Bend it a little. Change the spacing. Again. Again. Until this completely flat, completely still thing starts behaving like it has a pulse. Her goal, her words, was "a field of visual energy." Keep building it until it hits "maximum tension." And then, in '67, she lets color in. The next year, Venice. The Biennale. They give Riley the International Prize. First woman ever to win it. For painting.