Quote of the day
Bridget Riley: Painting with Two Verticals
I dimly recall New York’s rude welcome of Riley in 1965, when her work appeared in a show at MOMA called “The Responsive Eye.” What was so unacceptable about them? I think it was the utter clarity of their dealings with viewers, their way of forestalling interpretation. Their bluntness stymied intellectuals, and their impersonality bummed out romantics. The sixties had begun in a spirit of clarity, with youthful embraces of democratic taste and pragmatic joy. Then the shock of so much change, so fast, set in. As the art world expanded, it also fragmented, and artists retreated into subcultural parishes. Today, it seems plausible to look back on the past three decades in art as one long case of post-traumatic stress.
—Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, Nov. 6, 2000.
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