Reflections: Op Art, Bridgit Riley and Me

Reviewing Riley's work this morning,  I recalled stripes  is where she began for me. Her dots followed.

Briget Riley's dots with the illusion of depth

When I woke this morning I was still thinking about the distorted patterns I was
drawn to in that glass building reflecting a glass building and the optical motion in the GRAM's painting--Patterns in motion, not the actual title, but the title I've given  it.

The geometry of the painting is what gives it motion. It's what we called  "Op Art," a "school" of psychedelic illusions around the time of my gogo boots, French Courreges sweater and mini skirt strutting about to Nancy Sinatra's  "These boots were made for walking"  and curious about LSD, but too chicken to try it. (I was a mom after all).

The patterns of Emilio Pucci, fashion designer

Briget Riley was the British innovative painter whose optical illusions I liked best. Her work influenced both fashion and home furnishings fabric designers--Emilio Pucci comes to mind.  Other influences seemed to come from  Escher, Duchamp, Sol Lewitt,  all artists whose work involved patterns, repetition  and the illusion of movement. There's an op art painting in one of the offices of Mad Men that draws my attention every time and makes me miss whatever those chauvinistic pigs are talking about while they chug scotch and take drag after drag from their coffin nails. The set is really well done. I own the arc lamp you can see in this still and I use it  in my eclectic furnished house. My arc lamp is from the sixties. It is still being made today, but the materials are missing the quality.

This is the excitement I take home from art museums: plenty of ideas to toss around from all the innovations that are  open to us to explore, to do with as we choose. And I have over the years, tried them all. My diverse artistic tastes  have been very helpful to me in business, for I, as a interior space designer, was never restricted by my aesthetics and never accused of being a "one trick pony." I loved all styles of expression and can move easily between them. Clients appreciated that. Unfortunately, that freedom  of movement between styles is restricted to artists. You can choose your medium, your subject, but your style should be consistent. Mine is not. Take a look at what fascinated me periodically  from  the late seventies through the nineties.

In the seventies, my fascination with the directionality  and dimensional effects of stripes.  

In the eighties, geometric repetitions and deep space occupied my mind.


 

Then I  turned outward and added color.

In the nineties, I went big. This painting ,108" x  24," was sized so it would fit in the elevator up to our apartment.
Without a studio on the premises, I painted it on bolt canvas, scroll style across my desk, then stretched it.

Today, it occupies one wall of our bedroom with three feet on either side.
 In the apartment, it hung over the couch and was reflected in the wall of windows
 floor to ceiling windows across from it. The reflection surrounded by the lights
 of the city, twenty two stories down, was spectacular.

     After reviewing Riley, Escher, Duchamp, Pucci and me,the GRAM's op art painting is pretty tame.