The Week UK – 23 August 2019

30 ARTS

THE WEEK 24 August 2019

Art

Bridget Riley (b.1931) might

just be Britain’s “greatest

living artist”, said Mark

Hudson in The Daily

Telegraph. She sprang to fame

in the 1960s, withaseries of

“mind-bending” abstract

paintings that incorporated

“endless acres” of “stripes”,

“curves” and “wavy lines”,

and fitted in perfectly with the

psychedelic fashions of the

time. Having become a

reluctant “It girl” of Swinging

London art, she transcended

the hype, and has continued

to create astonishing,

uncompromising paintings

ever since. This new show

at the Edinburgh art festival

givesasnapshot of her

“obsessive drive”, showing

how she has created one of

the most powerful bodies of

work in modern art.

Beginning with life drawings

made while she was still at

school, and tracing her eight-

decade career right up to the present day, the exhibition brings

together more than 80 paintings that by turns dazzle, disorientate

and amaze. Seen together, they createasense of “heroic uplift”.

This show presentsafascinating picture of how Riley’s style has

evolved, said Laura Freeman in The Sunday Times. Early works

are “pale” imitations of the 19th century pointillist paintings of

Georges Seurat–but she soon develops her own artistic language.

Pink Landscape(1960) demonstrates some original ideas, but it

is not until we get to 1964’s

Burn–“adizzying punk’s

houndstooth that jags from

edge to edge”–that we get

the “voltage shock” of classic

Riley.Cataract 3(1967) is

another masterpiece of the

era, all “giddy waves and

squiffy stripes”. Later pictures

are no less great: 2010’sRed

with Red Triptychhas pillar-

box-coloured shapes floating

across the canvas “like silk

scarves”; whileCascando

(2015) sees triangles running

“amok”, making the image

appear to “shimmy” before

our eyes. And the only

disappointments are her most

recent paintings, featuring a

“sludge and country cottage”

palette and compositions that

are too “polite” by half.

It’s extraordinary to learn

how much planning goes

into aRiley painting, said

Jan Patience in The Herald.

Documents written by the artist herself explain how “every

single line and curve” has been mapped out in “microscopic”

detail; an analysis of the 1985 workRise 1,for example, fills fully

seven pages of text. As it turns out, Riley draws inspiration from

some rather unexpected sources: in several pictures, including

Rajasthan(2015)–a“vivid” image painted directly onto the

gallery wall–she even tips her hat to graffiti. All this adds up to

a“beezer” of an exhibition that “burns its way into your retinas

and feeds your soul”.

Exhibition of the week Bridget Riley

Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh (0131-624 6559, nationalgalleries.org). Until 22 September

After the Communist Revolution of

1949, China becameacountry isolated

from cultural developments in the West

–and with some notable exceptions, it

remained largely oblivious to postwar

trends in art until the 1990s. However,

as this show demonstrates, it has

quickly caught up. The show brings

together the work of nine Chinese

artists born between 1960 and 1990,

and its exhibits include art in pretty

much every medium imaginable, some

of it excellent: Zhao Zhao’s haunting

video about the marginalised people of

the ethnically diverse Xinjiang region;

a(necessarily) small-scale replica of a

1992 performance by Wang Youshen,

in which he plastered an entire section

of the Great Wall in newspapers; and

Yu Hong’sWitness to Growth,aseries

of four self-portraits painted in 1966,

1976, 1985 and 1992–each pivotal

dates in modern Chinese history. It can

be frustrating–more explanatory text

would be welcome–but overall, this is

afascinating trip through unfamiliar

territory. Prices on request.

27 Bell Street&67Lisson Street,

London NW1 (020-7724 2739).

Until7September.

Paean (1973): part ofa“beezer” of an exhibition

Where to buy...

The Week reviews an

exhibition inaprivate gallery

Afterimage:

Dangdai Yishu

at Lisson Gallery

Wang Youshen’s Newspaper/Advertising

It’s hard to fathom the

”creative process”

behind great art, but

that’s what an exhibi-

tion at the National

Gallery, which opens

in November, sets out

to do for Leonardo da

Vinci, says Robert Dex

in the London Evening

Standard. The show

will be devoted to an

“immersive exploration” of Leonardo’s

celebrated painting,The Virgin of the Rocks

(1495-1508). Exhibits will range fromamock-up

of the chapel (in the church of San Francesco

Grande, Milan) for which the painting was

made, to X-rays of the canvas that reveal two

“hidden” drawings. These were Leonardo’s

initial designs for the Virgin and the infant

Christ, painted over when he settled onafinal

composition. Perhaps even more fascinating

will be high-resolution images ofanumber of

ghostly handprints also detected just below the

painting’s surface, where primer was patted

down to make it more even. They probably are

those of one of Leonardo’s assistants, but it’s

possible they are those of Leonardo himself –

proof, perhaps, that even artistic geniuses are

not always “aboveabit of finger painting”.

Leonardo’s magic touch

©B

RIDGET RILEY 2019; WANG YOUSHEN, COURTESY LISSON GALLERY; THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON