As a student in the 1960’s I produced so called ‘Op Art’ paintings and sculpture, and ever since I have been fascinated by the capability of paint on canvas to affect emotions and distort representations of space through the eye. Wikipedia credits Victor Vasarely as the creator of what it describes as the ‘short lived’ Op Art movement. Unfortunately for Wikipedia this is another example of its sometime wild inaccuracy, as many of the movements exponents are still working. My hero, then as now, is Bridget Riley, who’s recent show in the De La Warr pavilion I reviewed.
Bridget Riley constructs images such as this initially with collage
It amuses me to see so much ‘op art’ in the environment, everywhere from naked tree branches to my current amusement photographically, the ‘Bridget Riley of the Shingle’. I suppose the name hit me as an echo of the ‘Madonna with the Big Boobies’ from the TV farce ‘Allo Allo’, but the amusement is also in the way the visual quality of the groynes colouration and relation with both the sea and shingle has echoes for me of the paintings of Bridget Riley – and her fame I suppose also lifts her in my mind to the celebrity enjoyed by a Madonna…
Colours on the metal – unedited, this is what you see if you look. The colour is stunning
The interplay between salt spray and metal and the corrosion that results produces variations of texture and colour that are endlessly interesting. The sheet metal rusts and blisters, and algae create different colours on the plates. The colour change is horizontal but the plates are vertical and it is this juxtaposing that sets up the visual tension I so enjoy. Waves crashing and shingle grating against the metal add a dynamic sound/visual to the static image too, a ‘happening’ to use an antique term.
‘La Bandiere di tutto il mondo2’ 1968 by Mario Cerolli
I have played with alternating strips of drawing and photography for quite a long time, exhibiting work on this theme (if you can call it a theme) in galleries in the 1970’s. The techniques have evolved especially with the way in which digital photography has freed up the enjoyment of the image in scale, immediacy and the ability to collage with drawing in a variety of media. It parallels the way Bridget Riley also uses collage as a part of her drawing and making technique.
Breaking wave #8. Print made with photography of sunset reflected on a wave and an oil pastel drawing,
My latest paintings and collages have used both photography and digital printing as I attempt a merger between the two, walking a fine line between abstraction and realism. This is a line I walk in the flower paintings too, where colour is broken out of the image, as shown in the Honeysuckle canvas. This plays with the emotional relationships of colour, with pattern, whilst bringing to the viewer an uneasy recognition with the realism of the flower drawing that underpins the structure. Strangely enough I have seen children recognise the image more easily, their innocent eye easily reading the drawing separately from the colour.
A different groyne shows different colour patterning and is slightly shaped
The relationship between seeing and image making, between the pure emotional play of abstract colour working and that shock of recognition of the audience/viewers world reality within art is a part of the evolution of art – from Uccello’s realism in the use of perspective through Turners abstractions of storm and sunsets, Monet’s flowers into Bridget Riley’s early wave series.
On Seaford seafront I find all this present, almost as a standing art joke to be enjoyed over and over on my walks. It seems to me that part of the rǒle of the artist is to represent realities that are around us as they see them, and in turn make us look differently at the realities we see.
The shingle less Riley and more Poons perhaps….
Do you find similar echoes of artists in the realities of your world, or echoes of your realities in the work of artists you like?
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Thank you for reading
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In many works since this period, Riley has employed others to paint the pieces, while she concentrates on the actual design of her work
Yet another great blog. I will admit I am not a fan of ‘Op art’ and I haven’t really studied the movement much as it seems very impersonal and maybe too clever. I have only seen a few of Bridget Riley works so really cannot comment. However, I think the different between your work and op art is your love of texture and light. Maybe the collage work is different. You do make me look more closely as I walk around these days.