By

James D. Trolinger, M.S., B.S., Ph.D, Holoknight, WWT

The World’s Worst Tourist

The Tate Britain Gallery is a wonderful, world class art gallery that houses the world’s largest collection of British art from all ages, including a huge Turner collection that fills an entire wing of the gallery with over 200 paintings and thousands of drawings and artifacts that are rotated periodically (including a pallet and brushes used by Turner). If you want to see magnificent British art like you have never seen, this is the place to go. And they cover every stage of art up to the neo modern, even including the (pardon me while I throw up) Young British Artists "movement". But our main focus today was a special show for Bridget Riley, one of

Summer into Spring-Bridget Riley

Britain’s best known modern artists who has developed a unique style in what generally is termed "Op Art".  My first reaction when Pauline showed me an announcement was rather ho hum. Since it was at the Tate Britain, however, I reasoned that I could take a quick look at the Riley show and then spend some serious time in the Turner Wing, which I would never tire of visiting. To my pleasant surprise, I spent several enjoyable hours in the Riley show and came away fully moved and impressed by her work.

Bridget Riley has been active for about 40 years and has developed a distinct style that uses vocabulary of Mondrian and pop art and what better fits what I call eye-beguiling art. When you look at it something dynamic happens to your vision. Unlike Mondrian’s work, which sometimes takes a few minutes looking before anything happens, Riley’s work hits you the second you look at it. And as you continue to stare at it the effect continues to grow, providing a strong meditative effect that draws one into the painting. While the effect is much more profound when standing before a room-sized painting, a small reproduction at least gives some idea of what happens.

"Summer into Spring" is a typical piece from the show. Looking at the reproduction here, one immediately sees movement in the wavey lines. Now if you can imagine how that might feel if the movement were ten fold, you can understand what happens when you walk up to an eight-feet high painting. Some of the works also give a 3-D sensation that is quite amazing. I have written before that only holography can provide a 3-D sensation with movement. Riley clearly proves me wrong with several of her works in the show. I have seen many optical illusions and drawings that use video neural properties to trick the eye, but Riley exploits these to the extreme with the large format.

My favorite piece in the show is a large black and white painting that uses wavey lines to give both the impression of 3-D and movement more so than any of the other works. I noticed people moving up close and wanting to touch it to make sure that it was, indeed, really only 2-D. One cannot look at this painting without feeling loss of control. It takes over the visual system and plays games with it, making it very easy to get lost in the picture. This is not the most pleasureful of the works or the prettiest, just the most dynamic. I could not find an electronic version of it.

"Movement in squares" gives a similar illusion by lining squares with constant height but narrowing width.

Riley also presents pure abstract depictions that are reminiscent of the leaves of a forest in paintings like Fete and Echo. The show included sketches and designs that Riley used to produce some of her work. More than just art works, many of Riley's paintings are engineering achievements as well.