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Lot Essay
‘The music of colour, that’s what I want’ (Bridget Riley)
Bridget Riley’s paintings came to prominence in the United Kingdom in 1964 with both The New Generation exhibition at Whitechapel Art Gallery (where her work was exhibited alongside her contemporaries Derek Boshier, Patrick Caulfield, Antony Donaldson, David Hockney, John Hoyland, Paul Huxley, Allen Jones, Peter Phillips, Patrick Procktor, Michael Vaughan and Brett Whiteley) and Painting and Sculpture of a Decade, 1954-1964 at The Tate Gallery, London. International prominence followed soon thereafter when she exhibited alongside Victor Vasarely and others in the Museum of Modern Art in New York exhibition, The Responsive Eye in 1965 where one of her paintings was illustrated on the cover of the exhibition catalogue and which went on to tour to St. Louis, Seattle, Pasadena, Baltimore and The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
In 1967, Bridget Riley made her move from black and white compositions to colour; this is explained by R. Kudielka, ‘in the years that she received international recognition for her rigorous black – and – white work, she was secretly trying to find a footing in colour. These attempts however never left the studio, because they consistently disappointed her. Introduced into the evolved contrast-structure of the early work, mostly in the guise of the tonal modulation or chromatic sequence, colour always remained a gratuitous, irremediably external accessory. Later she described this false start disparagingly as ‘colouring form’, and dismissed it as being incompatible with her true intentions: ‘I want to create a colour-form, not coloured forms’ […] But where to start in order to move colour from being a peripheral attribute into holding a central position? Others faced with the same dilemma for an equally long time might easily have lost faith in the basis of their work and simply changed direction altogether. Not so Bridget Riley. The peculiar genius of her work is a wide-awake, unerring confidence in the meaning of experience; and the power of this commitment never appears more compellingly than in an instant of apparent failure. ‘You have to accept it in order to come out right at the other end,’ is her principle. And so the mathematical basis of her work, which had so long and so obstinately barred her access to colour, ultimately became, in the great festive unfolding of Late Morning (1967), the point of departure for an understanding of colour which makes it possible to speak of Bridget Riley today as a legitimate heir of the pioneer colourists of modern art. In the process of constantly running up against the same barrier, that of the isolation of colour as a superficial coating, the seeming validity of the common prejudice was dispelled’ (R. Kudielka, exhibition catalogue, Bridget Riley Works 1959-78, 1978, British Council, pp. 20, 21). Until 1978 Riley restricted herself to three colours for each of her paintings. The 1978 Song of Orpheus series expanded this to five, with further expansion yet to come.
In 1968, Riley won the International Prize for painting at the 34th Venice Biennale. In doing so, she became the first English contemporary painter and the first woman ever to achieve this distinction. Bridget Riley’s first solo exhibition at the Rowan Gallery, London in 1969 cemented a relationship with its proprietor, Alex Gregory-Hood (1915-1999) who continued to exhibit and promote her work for the next twenty years. ‘In 1958, Alex Gregory-Hood, was promoted to Colonel commanding the Grenadier Guards and nominated for the Imperial Defence college, which would have led to him becoming a General at a remarkably early age. Legend has it that he asked for 30 minutes to think things over and went for a walk in St James's Park. He returned to Whitehall - and announced his intention of opening an art gallery. In due course, in 1960, he resigned his commission and two years later the Rowan Gallery opened its doors in Lowndes Street, Belgravia. The importance of the gallery in bringing new British abstract and experimental art before the public cannot be overstated’ (see The Guardian, Obituaries, 28 July 1999).
Bryan Robertson, writing in the Spectator, 2 May 1969 wrote of her work at that time, ‘they have a deceptive ease and charm about them (but only at first glance) because of their great clarity and refinement; above all, because, of their insistence in concentrating without digression upon the full implications of one particular principle at a time. In this sense what Riley does turns from a formal exercise into a romantic visual poem. For what this principle yields up in each case is astonishing in terms of interior dialogue, expressed by a wholly unexpected range of disclosures relating to colour, light, slow or fast speed, spatial thrust into or away from the surface , and the spill over into virgin white areas of warmth or coldness from adjacent but sharply constrained strips of pure colour’.
Thrust 2 (the present work) can be compared to Thrust 1 (private collection), however, the two paintings do related to each other as such. Thrust 1 states the principle that Bridget Riley refers to as a ‘cross-over’ device where one colour diagonal crosses another one. This concept is further discussed in Riley’s 1978 conversation with Robert Kudielka Into Colour, in which she describes the idea of the 'cross-overs', although specific reference to the 'Thrust' paintings is not made. Thrust 2 ‘extends the colour change and amassing effect of the changing colour perception of Thrust 1, in this way, it anticipates the building up of colour zones in paintings such as Zing 1 (private collection) and Zing 2 (private collection) from 1971. The title 'Thrust' is indicative of how Bridget Riley sets about her paintings with an almost physical feeling for the movement of forms and colour: 'Thrust', therefore, is a way of describing how the tapering forms crossing green bands function pictorially.
James H. Clark (1936-2016), the former owner of the present work lent Thrust 2 to the 1970-71 Arts Council retrospective touring exhibition and was a member of the Board of Trustees for the Dallas Museum of Art. Another important composition by Riley, Rise 2, again dating from 1970 and measuring 65¼ x 126 ¾ x 2 1/8 in. (Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection) was the gift of Mr and Mrs James H. Clark in 1976. Mr and Mrs James H. Clark established The Lillian and James H. Clark Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Dallas Museum of Art, whose remit is to oversee all aspects of the Modern European collection, including paintings and sculpture from 1800 to 1945.
We are grateful to The Bridget Riley Archive for their kind assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
The Bridget Riley Archive is preparing the forthcoming complete catalogue of Bridget Riley's paintings and would like to hear from owners of any works by Bridget Riley, so that these can be included in this comprehensive catalogue. Please write to The Bridget Riley Archive, c/o Modern British and Irish Art, Christie’s, 8 King Street, St James’s, London, SW1Y 6QT.
Bridget Riley’s paintings came to prominence in the United Kingdom in 1964 with both The New Generation exhibition at Whitechapel Art Gallery (where her work was exhibited alongside her contemporaries Derek Boshier, Patrick Caulfield, Antony Donaldson, David Hockney, John Hoyland, Paul Huxley, Allen Jones, Peter Phillips, Patrick Procktor, Michael Vaughan and Brett Whiteley) and Painting and Sculpture of a Decade, 1954-1964 at The Tate Gallery, London. International prominence followed soon thereafter when she exhibited alongside Victor Vasarely and others in the Museum of Modern Art in New York exhibition, The Responsive Eye in 1965 where one of her paintings was illustrated on the cover of the exhibition catalogue and which went on to tour to St. Louis, Seattle, Pasadena, Baltimore and The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
In 1967, Bridget Riley made her move from black and white compositions to colour; this is explained by R. Kudielka, ‘in the years that she received international recognition for her rigorous black – and – white work, she was secretly trying to find a footing in colour. These attempts however never left the studio, because they consistently disappointed her. Introduced into the evolved contrast-structure of the early work, mostly in the guise of the tonal modulation or chromatic sequence, colour always remained a gratuitous, irremediably external accessory. Later she described this false start disparagingly as ‘colouring form’, and dismissed it as being incompatible with her true intentions: ‘I want to create a colour-form, not coloured forms’ […] But where to start in order to move colour from being a peripheral attribute into holding a central position? Others faced with the same dilemma for an equally long time might easily have lost faith in the basis of their work and simply changed direction altogether. Not so Bridget Riley. The peculiar genius of her work is a wide-awake, unerring confidence in the meaning of experience; and the power of this commitment never appears more compellingly than in an instant of apparent failure. ‘You have to accept it in order to come out right at the other end,’ is her principle. And so the mathematical basis of her work, which had so long and so obstinately barred her access to colour, ultimately became, in the great festive unfolding of Late Morning (1967), the point of departure for an understanding of colour which makes it possible to speak of Bridget Riley today as a legitimate heir of the pioneer colourists of modern art. In the process of constantly running up against the same barrier, that of the isolation of colour as a superficial coating, the seeming validity of the common prejudice was dispelled’ (R. Kudielka, exhibition catalogue, Bridget Riley Works 1959-78, 1978, British Council, pp. 20, 21). Until 1978 Riley restricted herself to three colours for each of her paintings. The 1978 Song of Orpheus series expanded this to five, with further expansion yet to come.
In 1968, Riley won the International Prize for painting at the 34th Venice Biennale. In doing so, she became the first English contemporary painter and the first woman ever to achieve this distinction. Bridget Riley’s first solo exhibition at the Rowan Gallery, London in 1969 cemented a relationship with its proprietor, Alex Gregory-Hood (1915-1999) who continued to exhibit and promote her work for the next twenty years. ‘In 1958, Alex Gregory-Hood, was promoted to Colonel commanding the Grenadier Guards and nominated for the Imperial Defence college, which would have led to him becoming a General at a remarkably early age. Legend has it that he asked for 30 minutes to think things over and went for a walk in St James's Park. He returned to Whitehall - and announced his intention of opening an art gallery. In due course, in 1960, he resigned his commission and two years later the Rowan Gallery opened its doors in Lowndes Street, Belgravia. The importance of the gallery in bringing new British abstract and experimental art before the public cannot be overstated’ (see The Guardian, Obituaries, 28 July 1999).
Bryan Robertson, writing in the Spectator, 2 May 1969 wrote of her work at that time, ‘they have a deceptive ease and charm about them (but only at first glance) because of their great clarity and refinement; above all, because, of their insistence in concentrating without digression upon the full implications of one particular principle at a time. In this sense what Riley does turns from a formal exercise into a romantic visual poem. For what this principle yields up in each case is astonishing in terms of interior dialogue, expressed by a wholly unexpected range of disclosures relating to colour, light, slow or fast speed, spatial thrust into or away from the surface , and the spill over into virgin white areas of warmth or coldness from adjacent but sharply constrained strips of pure colour’.
Thrust 2 (the present work) can be compared to Thrust 1 (private collection), however, the two paintings do related to each other as such. Thrust 1 states the principle that Bridget Riley refers to as a ‘cross-over’ device where one colour diagonal crosses another one. This concept is further discussed in Riley’s 1978 conversation with Robert Kudielka Into Colour, in which she describes the idea of the 'cross-overs', although specific reference to the 'Thrust' paintings is not made. Thrust 2 ‘extends the colour change and amassing effect of the changing colour perception of Thrust 1, in this way, it anticipates the building up of colour zones in paintings such as Zing 1 (private collection) and Zing 2 (private collection) from 1971. The title 'Thrust' is indicative of how Bridget Riley sets about her paintings with an almost physical feeling for the movement of forms and colour: 'Thrust', therefore, is a way of describing how the tapering forms crossing green bands function pictorially.
James H. Clark (1936-2016), the former owner of the present work lent Thrust 2 to the 1970-71 Arts Council retrospective touring exhibition and was a member of the Board of Trustees for the Dallas Museum of Art. Another important composition by Riley, Rise 2, again dating from 1970 and measuring 65¼ x 126 ¾ x 2 1/8 in. (Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection) was the gift of Mr and Mrs James H. Clark in 1976. Mr and Mrs James H. Clark established The Lillian and James H. Clark Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Dallas Museum of Art, whose remit is to oversee all aspects of the Modern European collection, including paintings and sculpture from 1800 to 1945.
We are grateful to The Bridget Riley Archive for their kind assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
The Bridget Riley Archive is preparing the forthcoming complete catalogue of Bridget Riley's paintings and would like to hear from owners of any works by Bridget Riley, so that these can be included in this comprehensive catalogue. Please write to The Bridget Riley Archive, c/o Modern British and Irish Art, Christie’s, 8 King Street, St James’s, London, SW1Y 6QT.