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Lot Essay
Having spent much of the 1960s exploring the visual effects of modulation and contrasting units within her black and white paintings, Riley turned her attention increasingly to exploring new visual sensations that could be created from the introduction of colour. Executed in 1973, Bridget Riley’s Sequence B - Study for 'Paean' is a dynamic example of the interplay between form and colour that permeates much of Riley’s work. Created as a preparatory study for the large scale painting Paean, which was completed in the same year, the present composition reveals Riley’s investigation of the expressive potential of chromatic interaction.
Stripes were a recurring motif within her oeuvre between 1967 and 1974, and were a crucial component to Riley’s exploration of the perceptual properties of colour. The present work consists of a passage of linear ribbons of gouache - arranged in various chromatic pairings of red, green, and blue - which traverse the graph paper. The optical interaction between the juxtaposed colours creates a destabilising effect which is paradoxical to the ordered nature of the composition, drawing our attention to Riley’s ability to imbue her work simultaneously with a sense of both order and uncertainty. Indeed, the concept of the mutability of colour is one that pervades Riley’s practice: ‘I saw that the basis of colour is its instability. Instead of searching for a firm foundation, I realised I had one in the very opposite.’ (B. Riley, ‘A Dialogue with Sensation: The Art of Bridget Riley’, in exhibition catalogue, Bridget Riley, Tate, London, 2003, p. 18).
With a strong affinity for Post-Impressionist artists such as Georges Seurat, Pierre Bonnard, and Henri Matisse, this work demonstrates Riley’s exploration of the emotive and visual potential of colour. The triadic strips, punctuated by bands of white, create a rhythmic effect which is reflected in the metaphoric title of the work, Paean, which refers to joyous song or a hymn of praise. As our gaze moves across the horizontal composition, the sequence of triads feels like a musical progression, evoking a lyrical quality through the alternating chromatic arrangements that appear to vibrate before our eyes. This optical play reveals Riley’s enduring fascination with colour and chromatic complexity, first provoked by the artist’s engagement with the work of the Pointillist painter Seurat. Of Seurat’s work, Riley concludes that ‘what we see is ourselves looking’ - a sentiment that is equally pertinent to the present work, which has been in the same private collection for over twenty years. (B. Riley, ‘Bridget Riley: The Edge of Animation’, in ibid., p. 89).
Stripes were a recurring motif within her oeuvre between 1967 and 1974, and were a crucial component to Riley’s exploration of the perceptual properties of colour. The present work consists of a passage of linear ribbons of gouache - arranged in various chromatic pairings of red, green, and blue - which traverse the graph paper. The optical interaction between the juxtaposed colours creates a destabilising effect which is paradoxical to the ordered nature of the composition, drawing our attention to Riley’s ability to imbue her work simultaneously with a sense of both order and uncertainty. Indeed, the concept of the mutability of colour is one that pervades Riley’s practice: ‘I saw that the basis of colour is its instability. Instead of searching for a firm foundation, I realised I had one in the very opposite.’ (B. Riley, ‘A Dialogue with Sensation: The Art of Bridget Riley’, in exhibition catalogue, Bridget Riley, Tate, London, 2003, p. 18).
With a strong affinity for Post-Impressionist artists such as Georges Seurat, Pierre Bonnard, and Henri Matisse, this work demonstrates Riley’s exploration of the emotive and visual potential of colour. The triadic strips, punctuated by bands of white, create a rhythmic effect which is reflected in the metaphoric title of the work, Paean, which refers to joyous song or a hymn of praise. As our gaze moves across the horizontal composition, the sequence of triads feels like a musical progression, evoking a lyrical quality through the alternating chromatic arrangements that appear to vibrate before our eyes. This optical play reveals Riley’s enduring fascination with colour and chromatic complexity, first provoked by the artist’s engagement with the work of the Pointillist painter Seurat. Of Seurat’s work, Riley concludes that ‘what we see is ourselves looking’ - a sentiment that is equally pertinent to the present work, which has been in the same private collection for over twenty years. (B. Riley, ‘Bridget Riley: The Edge of Animation’, in ibid., p. 89).