FISSION
BRIDGET RILEY, 1962
Rows of black dots, neat as a printed page. Then, toward the middle, they get squeezed. Thinner and thinner, until the whole center looks like it's caving in. Keep looking. It flickers. It kinda swarms. Paint isn't supposed to move. But this thing somehow does. So it's the early sixties. Bridget Riley, working in black and white only. A flat board, a grid of dots, and an effect that works on every eyeball that walks past. In 1965, a museum in New York hangs a big show of this stuff. Op art. Paintings that don't move, but somehow won't sit still. The show is called The Responsive Eye. Riley's in it, so she flies over for the opening. And on the ride in from the airport, she passes the shop windows on Madison Avenue. Full of dresses. Printed with her paintings. The show hasn't even opened yet. Nobody asked her. Nobody paid her. My heart sank. Her words. The show opens anyway, and it's a smash. Biggest crowds in that museum's history. One day in April breaks its single-day record. And the dresses keep selling. Macy's. Bloomingdale's. She borrows a lawyer, Barnett Newman's guy, and tries to sue. American law at the time has nothing for a painter whose picture ends up on a dress. Nothing happens. The knockoffs proved her right in the worst way. The effect works on anything. A board. A dress. Which is a problem, if you want it to be art. Riley figured it would take at least twenty years before anyone looked at her paintings seriously again. One more thing about that museum in New York. The one that hung the show, packed in the crowds, lit the fuse. You're standing in it.