1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,960 This programme contains scenes of Repetitive Flashing Images 2 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.MX 3 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX 4 00:00:10,280 --> 00:00:14,120 She was absolutely revolutionary. 5 00:00:14,120 --> 00:00:19,240 She moved art forward by about, I don't know, 500 years, 6 00:00:19,240 --> 00:00:22,960 1,000 years, and no-one ever gave her the right credit for that. 7 00:00:25,320 --> 00:00:31,400 A painter... Yes. ..first and foremost. And that's what I do. 8 00:00:31,400 --> 00:00:37,640 What's most striking about her work is the extreme originality of it. 9 00:00:37,640 --> 00:00:40,880 She was clearing the air, she was rinsing the eye. 10 00:00:42,560 --> 00:00:45,840 The one thing people say, you can't look at it - it keeps moving 11 00:00:45,840 --> 00:00:48,760 and jumping and it hurts your eyes. I'd hate to have it on my wall. 12 00:00:49,760 --> 00:00:52,400 Well, that's not altogether relevant, is it? 13 00:00:52,400 --> 00:00:54,880 Art has got other things to do besides being 14 00:00:54,880 --> 00:00:56,000 comfortable to live with. 15 00:00:56,000 --> 00:01:00,520 When I look at her work, I just sort of breathe it in, really. 16 00:01:00,520 --> 00:01:04,200 I'm a big believer in art as experience, 17 00:01:04,200 --> 00:01:07,440 so Bridget is one of the goddesses of this idea! 18 00:01:09,720 --> 00:01:11,240 Please do not adjust your set. 19 00:01:12,680 --> 00:01:16,360 It's difficult to name a living female artist who has had the impact 20 00:01:16,360 --> 00:01:18,760 that Bridget has for such a prolonged period of time 21 00:01:18,760 --> 00:01:20,920 and equally so consistently. 22 00:01:20,920 --> 00:01:21,960 You can always stop. 23 00:01:28,840 --> 00:01:31,640 Bridget Riley has spent 60 years pushing 24 00:01:31,640 --> 00:01:33,800 the possibilities of painting. 25 00:01:33,800 --> 00:01:37,120 Her dazzling experimental work invites us 26 00:01:37,120 --> 00:01:42,160 to feel with our eyes and experience new ways of seeing. 27 00:01:42,160 --> 00:01:45,760 Today, Riley is one of our greatest living artists and, 28 00:01:45,760 --> 00:01:49,600 at the age of 90, shows no sign of stopping. 29 00:01:49,600 --> 00:01:52,920 BBC cameras have been filming Bridget Riley over the past 30 00:01:52,920 --> 00:01:56,920 few years, both at her studios in Cornwall and London, and for 31 00:01:56,920 --> 00:02:01,520 the installation of her enormous mural in the National Gallery. 32 00:02:01,520 --> 00:02:05,200 I met her at her studio in London for an extremely rare interview, 33 00:02:05,200 --> 00:02:10,280 where I found out how Bridget Riley became Bridget Riley. 34 00:02:10,280 --> 00:02:13,360 Many think of her as a poster girl for the swinging '60s, 35 00:02:13,360 --> 00:02:16,400 others hail her as a titan of abstract art, 36 00:02:16,400 --> 00:02:19,840 but Bridget herself tells a very different story. 37 00:02:28,960 --> 00:02:31,880 I want to talk about your own early memories in Cornwall. 38 00:02:31,880 --> 00:02:35,800 What do you remember about that? Um... 39 00:02:35,800 --> 00:02:40,840 We had evacuated ourselves - my mother, 40 00:02:40,840 --> 00:02:45,480 my sister and I and my father's sister. 41 00:02:45,480 --> 00:02:52,480 He had gone to the war and was reported missing. 42 00:02:52,480 --> 00:02:57,520 We lost him for many, many years. Mm-hm. 43 00:02:57,520 --> 00:03:00,640 My mother had spent many holidays 44 00:03:00,640 --> 00:03:03,480 and lived also in Cornwall as a child. 45 00:03:07,720 --> 00:03:11,880 We had a very small cottage - four rooms. 46 00:03:11,880 --> 00:03:16,960 I didn't go to school, not for...not for quite a long time, 47 00:03:16,960 --> 00:03:20,200 which was very, very heavenly! 48 00:03:23,680 --> 00:03:27,400 There was nowhere particularly to go or any reason to go there, 49 00:03:27,400 --> 00:03:32,840 but it was beautiful. Mm-hm. We were not far from the coast. 50 00:03:34,520 --> 00:03:40,400 We were there nearly five years, so there was, in fact, 51 00:03:40,400 --> 00:03:45,960 nothing to do but look and enjoy and appreciate 52 00:03:45,960 --> 00:03:52,440 and move around and walk in this extraordinarily beautiful landscape. 53 00:03:52,440 --> 00:03:57,680 In 2017, Riley took BBC cameras back to Cornwall to retrace 54 00:03:57,680 --> 00:04:00,680 the steps of her youth along the wild coastline. 55 00:04:02,280 --> 00:04:07,320 Over there, that double gabled house with the white side 56 00:04:07,320 --> 00:04:12,200 to it, is the old fish sellers, which my grandfather 57 00:04:12,200 --> 00:04:16,600 bought in the 19th century and made into a family home. 58 00:04:16,600 --> 00:04:21,120 Visits here, when I was young, during the war, 59 00:04:21,120 --> 00:04:27,760 were very precious expeditions because you had to walk - 60 00:04:27,760 --> 00:04:32,880 there was no petrol, no cars, no transport - 61 00:04:32,880 --> 00:04:37,960 so one walked, which was the best way to see the landscape anyhow. 62 00:04:43,360 --> 00:04:46,040 Did your mother and your aunt, who I knew had gone to Goldsmiths, 63 00:04:46,040 --> 00:04:48,960 did they actually direct you, "this could be good for art"? 64 00:04:48,960 --> 00:04:50,280 Or was it simply... No, no, no. 65 00:04:50,280 --> 00:04:54,640 ..look at this flower, look at that cloud? No. We'd go out for a walk. 66 00:04:54,640 --> 00:04:58,840 It was something to do, and that's what we did. 67 00:04:58,840 --> 00:05:00,920 But do you think it was then that you made 68 00:05:00,920 --> 00:05:03,840 the foundations of an artistic personality? 69 00:05:03,840 --> 00:05:07,480 Do you think that's where it came from? Yes, I do. 70 00:05:10,040 --> 00:05:15,000 There are so many interlocking shapes and rhythms that, 71 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:20,960 while not exactly consciously thinking about, 72 00:05:20,960 --> 00:05:23,600 do rise to the surface when you're drawing. 73 00:05:25,480 --> 00:05:32,080 You see the patterns that, when the wave breaks, come right up? 74 00:05:32,080 --> 00:05:33,120 Ha! 75 00:05:37,360 --> 00:05:41,320 And curves round. 76 00:05:41,320 --> 00:05:43,360 SHE LAUGHS 77 00:05:43,360 --> 00:05:48,320 But all those overlapping, curving shapes of the tide, as it 78 00:05:48,320 --> 00:05:55,040 comes up and turns round and goes back - just endlessly fascinating. 79 00:05:56,320 --> 00:05:58,720 And it will never be the same again. 80 00:05:58,720 --> 00:06:02,200 Every single unique, every single way, 81 00:06:02,200 --> 00:06:07,200 every single breaking of the sea on the rocks has never happened 82 00:06:07,200 --> 00:06:10,920 again exactly like that and has never happened before. 83 00:06:12,040 --> 00:06:15,840 Riley nurtured her interest in art at Cheltenham Ladies' College 84 00:06:15,840 --> 00:06:18,880 and by spending hours in the National Gallery in London. 85 00:06:27,920 --> 00:06:30,640 She was classically trained at Goldsmiths and then at 86 00:06:30,640 --> 00:06:33,680 the Royal College of Art, where her classmates included 87 00:06:33,680 --> 00:06:37,080 Peter Blake, Frank Auerbach and John Bratby. 88 00:06:37,080 --> 00:06:39,160 When I was a student at the Royal College of Art, 89 00:06:39,160 --> 00:06:43,040 and there was all the alumni's work on the wall, so I had to sit and 90 00:06:43,040 --> 00:06:45,720 invigilate next to Bridget Riley's work, 91 00:06:45,720 --> 00:06:48,280 and so I was just constantly staring at her work, 92 00:06:48,280 --> 00:06:53,600 and her student work was a portrait of a woman done in a very 93 00:06:53,600 --> 00:06:58,360 sort of Cezanney type style, really, and no-one would ever, ever, 94 00:06:58,360 --> 00:07:01,760 ever possibly believe that it was Bridget Riley's, 95 00:07:01,760 --> 00:07:05,200 but it was painted very well. She could paint. 96 00:07:05,200 --> 00:07:07,600 She could have painted however she wanted - 97 00:07:07,600 --> 00:07:10,320 she chose to paint the way that she does. 98 00:07:10,320 --> 00:07:15,800 She moved her mind from being like an average student who could 99 00:07:15,800 --> 00:07:20,120 paint well into a phenomenal artist that did something really 100 00:07:20,120 --> 00:07:22,320 ground-breaking and seminal. 101 00:07:22,320 --> 00:07:24,440 Well, this one was what I... 102 00:07:24,440 --> 00:07:26,760 ..the ones I did at Goldsmiths. 103 00:07:28,400 --> 00:07:32,360 This is a girl sitting on the white pillow. 104 00:07:32,360 --> 00:07:36,480 That was at the Royal College, and I can boast that they're very, 105 00:07:36,480 --> 00:07:40,000 very different but there's something about that one I prefer. 106 00:07:40,000 --> 00:07:44,120 Riley left art college in 1955, highly skilled 107 00:07:44,120 --> 00:07:47,040 but unsure of her style or subject. 108 00:07:47,040 --> 00:07:49,960 She spent some time teaching, working in a shop, 109 00:07:49,960 --> 00:07:53,600 nursing her father and suffering ill health herself. 110 00:07:53,600 --> 00:07:56,960 She also worked as an illustrator at an advertising agency. 111 00:07:58,160 --> 00:08:01,360 But it was in the work of French post-impressionist painter 112 00:08:01,360 --> 00:08:04,880 Georges Seurat that she discovered a pursuit that would become her 113 00:08:04,880 --> 00:08:09,760 lifelong passion - rethinking the very nature of perception itself. 114 00:08:09,760 --> 00:08:13,040 She talked to the BBC about him in 1979. 115 00:08:13,040 --> 00:08:15,360 I think one of the things that's most appealing about him 116 00:08:15,360 --> 00:08:19,000 was that he wanted the new, 117 00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:27,000 he wanted tremendously to be a modern artist in his, um...to, er... 118 00:08:28,080 --> 00:08:31,880 And science was actually the new excitement of the time, 119 00:08:31,880 --> 00:08:37,120 and he wanted to embrace this, to weld it into art, 120 00:08:37,120 --> 00:08:40,440 to draw on it through, you know, resources. What I love... 121 00:08:40,440 --> 00:08:42,760 You said about Seurat... Mm. 122 00:08:42,760 --> 00:08:45,760 ..that you learned method from him, but not his method. 123 00:08:45,760 --> 00:08:47,880 You learned method from him. Yes. 124 00:08:47,880 --> 00:08:49,280 And what is that method, then, 125 00:08:49,280 --> 00:08:51,360 of building up your colour, of tonality? 126 00:08:51,360 --> 00:08:56,000 The induction of colour, that is 127 00:08:56,000 --> 00:09:00,800 that colour can induce something it's not, on both levels - 128 00:09:00,800 --> 00:09:03,320 in actuality, as a pigment, 129 00:09:03,320 --> 00:09:09,080 and in the proximity and its interaction with what's next to it. 130 00:09:10,200 --> 00:09:11,800 Or when it's in a big field. 131 00:09:11,800 --> 00:09:17,960 So it's an immense, essentially unstable but, 132 00:09:17,960 --> 00:09:24,200 because of that, hugely exciting field to work with. 133 00:09:25,520 --> 00:09:29,360 Riley explored Seurat's technique by faithfully copying 134 00:09:29,360 --> 00:09:30,920 one of his paintings. 135 00:09:30,920 --> 00:09:32,840 One of the things that I found 136 00:09:32,840 --> 00:09:38,920 when I copied it was that he must have worked over the entire surface. 137 00:09:38,920 --> 00:09:41,840 For instance, with the blues, I think 138 00:09:41,840 --> 00:09:46,000 he must have worked over all the blue tendencies, 139 00:09:46,000 --> 00:09:51,880 and then with the pinks and with the greens and with the yellows. 140 00:09:51,880 --> 00:09:56,280 This black has orange, red... 141 00:09:57,560 --> 00:10:00,360 ..blue, green, altogether 142 00:10:00,360 --> 00:10:02,800 blending into a vibrant black, not a dead black, but a vibrant black. 143 00:10:02,800 --> 00:10:05,200 Not a dead black, but a vibrant black. 144 00:10:05,200 --> 00:10:07,840 Riley pursued Seurat's pointillist style, 145 00:10:07,840 --> 00:10:11,200 most notably in her 1960 work Pink Landscape, 146 00:10:11,200 --> 00:10:14,200 but she explained in 2019 147 00:10:14,200 --> 00:10:16,680 how disappointed she was with the results. 148 00:10:16,680 --> 00:10:22,520 Although it was competent and the best I could do... 149 00:10:23,920 --> 00:10:26,680 ..I did feel that it did not convey 150 00:10:26,680 --> 00:10:30,600 what I had experienced 151 00:10:30,600 --> 00:10:34,000 when I was looking at the valley 152 00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:35,880 over in Siena 153 00:10:35,880 --> 00:10:37,840 under the sizzling heat. 154 00:10:37,840 --> 00:10:40,040 And what I had not got 155 00:10:40,040 --> 00:10:42,160 was the sensation... 156 00:10:43,480 --> 00:10:45,040 ..And so I'd missed it. 157 00:10:45,040 --> 00:10:47,080 I'd missed the most important thing. 158 00:10:47,080 --> 00:10:49,200 The sensation of the heat, 159 00:10:49,200 --> 00:10:51,680 the shimmer, the dazzle, 160 00:10:51,680 --> 00:10:53,480 the glitter of light. 161 00:10:53,480 --> 00:10:56,360 And I wondered really what I had been doing. 162 00:10:56,360 --> 00:10:59,040 I'd been going up a wrong path. 163 00:10:59,040 --> 00:11:02,440 However, this failure was a key turning point in Riley's career, 164 00:11:02,440 --> 00:11:04,920 finally giving her the sense of direction 165 00:11:04,920 --> 00:11:07,160 she'd been craving since art college. 166 00:11:07,160 --> 00:11:13,160 When I started then to work from the pictorial elements themselves 167 00:11:13,160 --> 00:11:15,520 to find out what they could do 168 00:11:15,520 --> 00:11:21,440 when they were no longer serving a purpose, 169 00:11:21,440 --> 00:11:23,720 but just for themselves, 170 00:11:23,720 --> 00:11:28,200 which was experimental. 171 00:11:28,200 --> 00:11:32,840 I began a long process of finding out, 172 00:11:32,840 --> 00:11:34,520 and with the finding out, 173 00:11:34,520 --> 00:11:38,840 I would find a sensation 174 00:11:38,840 --> 00:11:42,720 which I recognised, something I'd experienced before in nature. 175 00:11:47,400 --> 00:11:49,320 And it was not just Riley and her art 176 00:11:49,320 --> 00:11:51,800 that were hurtling in a different direction. 177 00:11:51,800 --> 00:11:54,600 As the '60s dawned, cultural and social barriers 178 00:11:54,600 --> 00:11:58,520 were being dismantled by a post-war generation hungry for change. 179 00:11:59,720 --> 00:12:02,560 Do you think art has helped you understand the world, 180 00:12:02,560 --> 00:12:05,280 that shaped your understanding of the world? 181 00:12:05,280 --> 00:12:07,520 Yes, I do, actually. 182 00:12:07,520 --> 00:12:10,480 I think that artists have... 183 00:12:10,480 --> 00:12:13,600 Painters have borne witness... 184 00:12:13,600 --> 00:12:17,040 It's one of the tasks, so to speak. 185 00:12:17,040 --> 00:12:20,000 ..to changing circumstances 186 00:12:20,000 --> 00:12:22,360 and events, to horrors 187 00:12:22,360 --> 00:12:24,400 as well as to wonders. 188 00:12:25,360 --> 00:12:28,480 And so they held a mirror up... 189 00:12:30,680 --> 00:12:33,600 ..to human nature 190 00:12:33,600 --> 00:12:36,560 and reported, you know... 191 00:12:38,400 --> 00:12:40,240 ..faithfully. 192 00:12:40,240 --> 00:12:42,200 I grew up in the 1950s, 193 00:12:42,200 --> 00:12:44,760 which in provincial England 194 00:12:44,760 --> 00:12:47,720 was really a visual blackout. 195 00:12:47,720 --> 00:12:50,720 I mean, there was absolutely nothing to look at. 196 00:12:50,720 --> 00:12:53,600 British art was very stagnant, really. 197 00:12:53,600 --> 00:12:55,280 It was a stagnant pond. 198 00:12:55,280 --> 00:12:56,960 Bridget had a wonderful phrase for it. 199 00:12:59,000 --> 00:13:02,520 "Infectious apathy and vicious insularity," 200 00:13:02,520 --> 00:13:05,360 and the minute I read that phrase, 201 00:13:05,360 --> 00:13:07,560 I recognised, "That is the world I grew up in," 202 00:13:07,560 --> 00:13:10,080 certainly so far as the arts were concerned. 203 00:13:11,560 --> 00:13:13,920 I knew we were living in the 20th century, 204 00:13:13,920 --> 00:13:16,200 but there was no visual evidence of that 205 00:13:16,200 --> 00:13:18,920 so far as the art world was concerned. 206 00:13:18,920 --> 00:13:22,800 So Bridget's first task - that of her whole generation 207 00:13:22,800 --> 00:13:26,840 but, in a sense, she spearheaded it - 208 00:13:26,840 --> 00:13:28,600 was to blow up, 209 00:13:28,600 --> 00:13:30,200 to dynamite, 210 00:13:30,200 --> 00:13:31,640 this very... 211 00:13:31,640 --> 00:13:35,400 This world of preconceptions, of received views, of tired eyes. 212 00:13:37,600 --> 00:13:40,720 The epicentre of the burgeoning contemporary art scene 213 00:13:40,720 --> 00:13:42,880 was the Whitechapel Gallery in London, 214 00:13:42,880 --> 00:13:45,960 where director Bryan Robertson broadened the horizons 215 00:13:45,960 --> 00:13:48,520 of British artists like Bridget Riley. 216 00:13:48,520 --> 00:13:50,760 It was the Whitechapel, 217 00:13:50,760 --> 00:13:54,440 which showed those, among marvellous American painters, 218 00:13:54,440 --> 00:13:57,400 the abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock. 219 00:13:57,400 --> 00:14:00,160 They all had solo shows at the Whitechapel 220 00:14:00,160 --> 00:14:01,480 and what Bryan did... 221 00:14:02,480 --> 00:14:05,880 First of all, he chose and curated those shows. 222 00:14:05,880 --> 00:14:08,720 Bridget Riley herself said, "He gave us confidence," 223 00:14:08,720 --> 00:14:11,800 which was very necessary in those days. 224 00:14:11,800 --> 00:14:15,560 He gave them the sense that they could operate on the same scale 225 00:14:15,560 --> 00:14:17,440 and that they didn't have to... 226 00:14:17,440 --> 00:14:19,440 They didn't have to take a backseat. 227 00:14:19,440 --> 00:14:22,600 That they, too, could do things as powerful, as intense, 228 00:14:22,600 --> 00:14:24,080 as original, as expressive 229 00:14:24,080 --> 00:14:27,680 of how it felt to be alive at that time. 230 00:14:27,680 --> 00:14:32,880 And this was a completely new concept in British art, 231 00:14:32,880 --> 00:14:34,920 and we lived just up the road from Bridget. 232 00:14:34,920 --> 00:14:36,680 When she'd finished a painting, 233 00:14:36,680 --> 00:14:38,920 we, my husband and I, were very often the... 234 00:14:38,920 --> 00:14:42,160 She would ring us up just to come and see, you know, 235 00:14:42,160 --> 00:14:44,520 a painter in his studio or her studio, 236 00:14:44,520 --> 00:14:48,720 when a thing is actually finished does like an outside eye on it. 237 00:14:48,720 --> 00:14:51,880 So we had that pleasure and privilege 238 00:14:51,880 --> 00:14:55,440 of sitting and looking at many of those blacks and whites 239 00:14:55,440 --> 00:14:57,160 as soon as they were finished. 240 00:14:57,160 --> 00:14:59,080 It was an extraordinary experience. 241 00:15:03,680 --> 00:15:05,920 Inspired by the abstract expressionists 242 00:15:05,920 --> 00:15:07,360 and Italian futurists, 243 00:15:07,360 --> 00:15:09,200 Riley exploded onto the art scene 244 00:15:09,200 --> 00:15:12,160 at the age of 30 with dazzling black and white paintings 245 00:15:12,160 --> 00:15:15,240 that were like nothing that had ever been seen before. 246 00:15:19,960 --> 00:15:24,280 It's interesting to think about whether it was shocking or not 247 00:15:24,280 --> 00:15:28,400 because, in a sense, it was, 248 00:15:28,400 --> 00:15:31,880 but it was accessible. 249 00:15:35,440 --> 00:15:37,160 I remember Kiss. 250 00:15:37,160 --> 00:15:39,200 That, I first saw in the gallery. 251 00:15:39,200 --> 00:15:41,080 It's a painting of 1961 252 00:15:41,080 --> 00:15:44,640 from Bridget's first show when she really hit her stride. 253 00:15:46,640 --> 00:15:48,240 It just amazed me. 254 00:15:48,240 --> 00:15:50,880 I'd never seen anything like it. 255 00:15:52,120 --> 00:15:55,040 I suddenly realised that, to represent the 20th century, 256 00:15:55,040 --> 00:15:58,200 you couldn't go on using worn-out 19th century conventions. 257 00:15:59,800 --> 00:16:03,720 My paintings are not concerned with the romantic legacy of expression, 258 00:16:03,720 --> 00:16:07,480 nor with fantasies, concepts or symbols. 259 00:16:07,480 --> 00:16:09,360 I draw from nature. 260 00:16:09,360 --> 00:16:11,040 I work with nature. 261 00:16:11,040 --> 00:16:13,600 Although in completely new terms. 262 00:16:13,600 --> 00:16:15,560 For me, nature is not landscape, 263 00:16:15,560 --> 00:16:17,680 but the dynamism of visual forces, 264 00:16:17,680 --> 00:16:20,040 an event rather than an appearance. 265 00:16:20,960 --> 00:16:24,320 These forces can only be tackled by treating colour and form 266 00:16:24,320 --> 00:16:25,760 as ultimate identities, 267 00:16:25,760 --> 00:16:29,440 freeing them from all descriptive or functional roles. 268 00:16:30,440 --> 00:16:34,400 You talked about a shift in your work from perceptual orientation 269 00:16:34,400 --> 00:16:36,920 to one of sensation, but you have a sensation 270 00:16:36,920 --> 00:16:40,120 in front of your paintings that doesn't always, for me anyway, 271 00:16:40,120 --> 00:16:43,560 constitute abstract because you have a huge emotional engagement 272 00:16:43,560 --> 00:16:44,960 with your paintings. 273 00:16:44,960 --> 00:16:47,240 So do you think "abstract" is the right word for you, 274 00:16:47,240 --> 00:16:48,440 as an artist? 275 00:16:48,440 --> 00:16:51,080 You're ALWAYS called an abstract artist. 276 00:16:51,080 --> 00:16:54,240 I... No, I don't know... 277 00:16:54,240 --> 00:16:55,680 I don't know that it is. 278 00:16:55,680 --> 00:16:58,120 I don't... I don't... 279 00:16:58,120 --> 00:17:02,080 I think it's the one we use at the moment, and so I go along with it. 280 00:17:02,080 --> 00:17:05,840 But if somebody said I was an abstract artist, 281 00:17:05,840 --> 00:17:08,320 I would say, "That isn't a possibility." 282 00:17:11,160 --> 00:17:16,280 Perhaps I explore and I try to understand, 283 00:17:16,280 --> 00:17:21,800 and try to find out what I can look at, what can be seen. 284 00:17:23,000 --> 00:17:29,080 Movement in squares was one small change 285 00:17:29,080 --> 00:17:31,760 slowly, slowly building on, 286 00:17:31,760 --> 00:17:35,200 building on, building on, building on 287 00:17:35,200 --> 00:17:40,360 until it accelerated into a rapid movement in the square. 288 00:17:42,240 --> 00:17:45,920 It shuttled almost to extinction 289 00:17:45,920 --> 00:17:49,720 and then it would have closed the painting. 290 00:17:49,720 --> 00:17:52,600 There wouldn't have been anything there. 291 00:17:52,600 --> 00:17:55,640 I could do nothing but come back. 292 00:17:57,080 --> 00:17:59,320 I didn't have to go the whole way back, 293 00:17:59,320 --> 00:18:01,880 but some of the way back and... 294 00:18:03,440 --> 00:18:07,200 ..the next painting, which was Black To White Discs, 295 00:18:07,200 --> 00:18:09,920 I wanted to slow the whole thing down. 296 00:18:09,920 --> 00:18:13,200 And I realised if you made it larger, 297 00:18:13,200 --> 00:18:15,240 it would slow it down even more. 298 00:18:15,240 --> 00:18:19,440 So, in this way, involuntarily, 299 00:18:19,440 --> 00:18:21,640 almost, I began to... 300 00:18:23,720 --> 00:18:28,400 ..discover that I was actually working with my own sight... 301 00:18:28,400 --> 00:18:33,480 Mm-hm. ..your sight, the viewer's sight... 302 00:18:34,520 --> 00:18:36,400 ..and this gave us a.. 303 00:18:38,680 --> 00:18:42,680 That was the basis of communication. 304 00:18:45,400 --> 00:18:48,880 In making work that is about what it feels like to look at something, 305 00:18:48,880 --> 00:18:51,920 Riley's paintings are truly interactive. 306 00:18:51,920 --> 00:18:55,360 Each one completed by the viewer's own perception. 307 00:18:58,880 --> 00:19:02,960 You finish a painting and send it out into the world. 308 00:19:02,960 --> 00:19:07,320 To me, it's like pushing a boat out into the sea. 309 00:19:07,320 --> 00:19:09,760 It's on its own from now, 310 00:19:09,760 --> 00:19:11,640 a thing in the world, 311 00:19:11,640 --> 00:19:13,560 present. 312 00:19:13,560 --> 00:19:15,280 It must do the best it can 313 00:19:15,280 --> 00:19:16,800 by itself, 314 00:19:16,800 --> 00:19:18,880 which is to offer an experience, 315 00:19:18,880 --> 00:19:21,280 offer a possibility. 316 00:19:23,920 --> 00:19:25,440 It is funny because you do feel 317 00:19:25,440 --> 00:19:28,000 like you've entered a different space. 318 00:19:28,000 --> 00:19:29,240 It's kind of weird. It is odd. 319 00:19:29,240 --> 00:19:30,640 It's like a different room. 320 00:19:32,560 --> 00:19:34,680 It's a sort of weird, sci-fi room... 321 00:19:35,960 --> 00:19:37,200 ..with maths in it. 322 00:19:37,200 --> 00:19:39,040 The first thing that hits you 323 00:19:39,040 --> 00:19:42,400 is just how you respond to it viscerally. 324 00:19:42,400 --> 00:19:45,800 Because I try... I suppose I try and judge everything by, 325 00:19:45,800 --> 00:19:48,760 "Does it bypass my brain and hit me there?" 326 00:19:48,760 --> 00:19:51,800 And if it does, then I'm interested, you know. 327 00:19:51,800 --> 00:19:54,560 It's about allowing us to see differently 328 00:19:54,560 --> 00:19:56,760 and to understand differently. 329 00:19:59,320 --> 00:20:01,400 And if we can do that, 330 00:20:01,400 --> 00:20:04,000 then you can accept all the differences around you. 331 00:20:10,280 --> 00:20:14,200 Rhythm and repetition are at the root of movement. 332 00:20:14,200 --> 00:20:16,400 They create a situation within which 333 00:20:16,400 --> 00:20:18,720 the most simple, basic forms 334 00:20:18,720 --> 00:20:21,880 start to become visually active. 335 00:20:21,880 --> 00:20:24,200 By massing them and repeating them, 336 00:20:24,200 --> 00:20:26,120 they become more fully present. 337 00:20:27,600 --> 00:20:31,000 Repetition acts as a sort of amplifier for visual events, 338 00:20:31,000 --> 00:20:33,880 which scene singly would hardly be visible. 339 00:20:36,160 --> 00:20:38,560 But to make these basic forms release 340 00:20:38,560 --> 00:20:40,840 the full visual energy within them, 341 00:20:40,840 --> 00:20:44,160 they have to breathe, as it were, to open and close... 342 00:20:46,120 --> 00:20:49,360 ..or to tighten up and then relax. 343 00:20:49,360 --> 00:20:53,120 A rhythm that's alive has to do with changing pace 344 00:20:53,120 --> 00:20:57,360 and feeling how the visual speed can expand and contract. 345 00:20:58,880 --> 00:21:00,400 Sometimes go slower 346 00:21:00,400 --> 00:21:02,800 and sometimes go faster. 347 00:21:02,800 --> 00:21:04,800 The whole thing must live. 348 00:21:05,800 --> 00:21:08,440 It's not obvious what the subject is at all. 349 00:21:08,440 --> 00:21:11,040 It's way more sensory, I suppose. 350 00:21:11,040 --> 00:21:13,840 I we sometimes it makes you feel uneasy, to be honest. 351 00:21:13,840 --> 00:21:15,800 And sometimes, it's a crass thing to say, 352 00:21:15,800 --> 00:21:17,360 but it makes your eyes go funny. 353 00:21:17,360 --> 00:21:18,840 It's not mischief. 354 00:21:18,840 --> 00:21:21,480 I don't want to say, "I'm just being mischievous." 355 00:21:21,480 --> 00:21:25,800 It's a field of exploration. 356 00:21:25,800 --> 00:21:29,280 But it also creates movement in the paintings... 357 00:21:29,280 --> 00:21:31,400 Of course it does because... ..and excitement. 358 00:21:31,400 --> 00:21:33,640 Yes, it does because this is an event happening, 359 00:21:33,640 --> 00:21:35,920 something is happening. 360 00:21:35,920 --> 00:21:39,800 Painting is like music, and it's easier if you think of it 361 00:21:39,800 --> 00:21:41,240 in those terms. 362 00:21:41,240 --> 00:21:44,600 Exactly as with music, you can describe it in terms of metaphors, 363 00:21:44,600 --> 00:21:46,600 you can say what it makes you feel like, 364 00:21:46,600 --> 00:21:48,920 but the actual feeling is what's happening. 365 00:21:48,920 --> 00:21:52,280 And I think music is a much easier way of thinking about one's response 366 00:21:52,280 --> 00:21:54,320 to Bridget's paintings than... 367 00:21:55,520 --> 00:21:57,000 ..art criticism, shall we say? 368 00:21:59,640 --> 00:22:03,160 Look at the titles of her early paintings - 369 00:22:03,160 --> 00:22:08,640 Tremor, Shift, Hesitate, Fall, Deny, Blaze. 370 00:22:08,640 --> 00:22:10,800 You know, they themselves, 371 00:22:10,800 --> 00:22:14,080 I know they're only titles, but they give you some sense 372 00:22:14,080 --> 00:22:16,200 of what's going on in the pictures. 373 00:22:16,200 --> 00:22:18,760 It's brilliant that she titles them because a lot of artists 374 00:22:18,760 --> 00:22:21,120 that make really hardcore, minimal work, 375 00:22:21,120 --> 00:22:24,920 it's always untitled with the title in brackets or untitled 376 00:22:24,920 --> 00:22:28,480 with a number, untitled B49 or something, 377 00:22:28,480 --> 00:22:30,480 and it's great that she titles the work 378 00:22:30,480 --> 00:22:33,000 because you then definitely are given a clue that 379 00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:35,240 there is an emotional impact in them. 380 00:22:40,280 --> 00:22:44,560 Riley's bold new style coincided with the op art craze 381 00:22:44,560 --> 00:22:46,840 of the early 1960s. 382 00:22:46,840 --> 00:22:50,400 Mind-bending art use patterns to create optical illusions 383 00:22:50,400 --> 00:22:54,800 and was lapped up by an audience hungry for psychedelic experiences. 384 00:22:56,960 --> 00:23:00,560 The "op art" label follows Riley around to this day, 385 00:23:00,560 --> 00:23:04,320 but she has always identified with a much older artistic tradition. 386 00:23:05,280 --> 00:23:08,440 The one period that people talk about you having 387 00:23:08,440 --> 00:23:11,360 ambivalence towards is the whole op art time, 388 00:23:11,360 --> 00:23:13,880 that you were associated with op art. 389 00:23:13,880 --> 00:23:16,120 Was it really almost against your will, 390 00:23:16,120 --> 00:23:18,760 or was it just a timing issue? 391 00:23:21,000 --> 00:23:23,680 It was more a timing issue. 392 00:23:23,680 --> 00:23:28,000 I think, actually, how we see and perception 393 00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:32,480 was obviously a major plank 394 00:23:32,480 --> 00:23:38,120 in the development of impressionism and post impressionism, 395 00:23:38,120 --> 00:23:40,240 and the whole modern art movement. 396 00:23:40,240 --> 00:23:44,240 So actually, op art is...was a blip, 397 00:23:44,240 --> 00:23:47,640 so to speak on the side. 398 00:23:47,640 --> 00:23:51,400 I mean, I think Cezanne said, "We need a new optics." 399 00:23:51,400 --> 00:23:55,360 When he found that, what he actually experienced... 400 00:23:57,600 --> 00:24:02,440 ..didn't measure up to the organisation of pictorial space. 401 00:24:06,760 --> 00:24:09,200 It was a blockbuster exhibition of op art 402 00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:11,880 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York 403 00:24:11,880 --> 00:24:15,200 that sealed Riley's reputation as a major international artist. 404 00:24:18,480 --> 00:24:22,000 However, she found the fame that followed uncomfortable 405 00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:24,640 as her art flowed from galleries onto high streets, 406 00:24:24,640 --> 00:24:26,480 defining the look of an entire era. 407 00:24:35,240 --> 00:24:39,280 Bridget has often expressed to me her unhappiness 408 00:24:39,280 --> 00:24:43,680 about what happened with the commercialisation of her work, 409 00:24:43,680 --> 00:24:47,040 which was done without her permission 410 00:24:47,040 --> 00:24:49,280 when she, you know, she arrived in New York 411 00:24:49,280 --> 00:24:51,120 and saw dresses in Bloomingdales 412 00:24:51,120 --> 00:24:53,400 which had her... 413 00:24:53,400 --> 00:24:56,080 Basically with patterns coming from her paintings, 414 00:24:56,080 --> 00:25:00,120 understandably very distressing. 415 00:25:00,120 --> 00:25:04,200 How do you feel when you walk down the street and you see...? Um... 416 00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:11,280 A bit sick. 417 00:25:15,520 --> 00:25:20,360 When your art was displayed alongside '60s fashion and so forth, 418 00:25:20,360 --> 00:25:22,840 you didn't see that as being 419 00:25:22,840 --> 00:25:25,000 something that you particularly enjoyed. 420 00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:27,880 I didn't have much of a chance 421 00:25:27,880 --> 00:25:30,760 to say anything about my work. 422 00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:33,640 Right. 423 00:25:33,640 --> 00:25:40,480 And I think, in fact, it was a failure to understand. 424 00:25:40,480 --> 00:25:43,400 A failure to understand your artistic endeavour 425 00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:44,520 versus somebody's... 426 00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:47,320 ..op art mini skirt. 427 00:25:47,320 --> 00:25:50,120 It was a very serious exhibition. 428 00:25:50,120 --> 00:25:53,880 I think the museum lost control of it. 429 00:25:54,800 --> 00:25:57,000 People were very excited about it 430 00:25:57,000 --> 00:25:58,800 because they did sense, 431 00:25:58,800 --> 00:26:03,160 quite rightly, that there was a big field here, a huge opportunity... 432 00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:07,880 ..for really, a new look at things 433 00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:13,720 and it just it just felt, it was too much. 434 00:26:13,720 --> 00:26:18,280 That idea of an exhibition being that popular, 435 00:26:18,280 --> 00:26:22,720 of contemporary art, that may have been the first one 436 00:26:22,720 --> 00:26:26,520 where there was that kind of big popular response 437 00:26:26,520 --> 00:26:29,760 and so nobody was really prepared for it. 438 00:26:31,560 --> 00:26:36,120 There's a sort of pressure which artists haven't had to put up with. 439 00:26:36,120 --> 00:26:39,800 I mean, you know, there is a philosophy since the 19th century 440 00:26:39,800 --> 00:26:42,520 of failure which protects an artist. 441 00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:45,920 There's a moral equation between failure and value... 442 00:26:47,760 --> 00:26:49,320 ..and we've got geared to this. 443 00:26:49,320 --> 00:26:52,000 Well, now we've got this problem of success 444 00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:55,280 and there's no actual philosophy do to cope. 445 00:26:55,280 --> 00:26:57,320 We've got to evolve one. 446 00:26:57,320 --> 00:27:04,040 And I think this is going to be one of the problems. 447 00:27:16,240 --> 00:27:18,280 In your long career, 448 00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:21,960 artistic dilemmas, you've only done, 449 00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:24,520 3D once. 450 00:27:24,520 --> 00:27:26,120 Tell me about that. 451 00:27:26,120 --> 00:27:27,920 Well, that came about 452 00:27:27,920 --> 00:27:31,840 when the National Gallery bought 453 00:27:31,840 --> 00:27:34,440 a big water lily painting. 454 00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:38,680 It was a big painting and you are enveloped in it visually, 455 00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:42,680 and I thought I would make a big painting, 456 00:27:42,680 --> 00:27:46,800 which enveloped you physically. 457 00:27:46,800 --> 00:27:48,960 That was a great mistake. 458 00:27:50,880 --> 00:27:54,560 That was too literal, absolutely too literal, 459 00:27:54,560 --> 00:27:57,120 so I went back to flat painting 460 00:27:57,120 --> 00:28:02,680 and engaging you on painting's proper condition, 461 00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:05,120 which is flat and open. 462 00:28:05,120 --> 00:28:06,840 But if you hadn't done that, 463 00:28:06,840 --> 00:28:09,920 you wouldn't have known that that's where you wanted to be 464 00:28:09,920 --> 00:28:13,520 and so is there ever such a thing as a mistake or is it just...? 465 00:28:13,520 --> 00:28:17,160 Oh, no, you're quite right. 466 00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:19,000 In a way there's not. 467 00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:23,440 And as Matisse said, "Don't get rid of your mistakes." 468 00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:28,600 Meaning, you know, that they are the things 469 00:28:28,600 --> 00:28:31,560 that will help you to get to move 470 00:28:31,560 --> 00:28:33,160 and to think, and to understand... 471 00:28:36,200 --> 00:28:38,240 ..a little bit more about what you're doing. 472 00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:47,360 Riley introduced pure colour 473 00:28:47,360 --> 00:28:49,840 to her paintings in 1967. 474 00:28:49,840 --> 00:28:53,040 When you moved from black and white, 475 00:28:53,040 --> 00:28:55,560 that was momentous for you. 476 00:28:55,560 --> 00:28:58,520 Well, I was heading towards it, 477 00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:02,520 but it had been a slow and gradual approach 478 00:29:02,520 --> 00:29:04,800 through tone 479 00:29:04,800 --> 00:29:08,560 and through drawing and life drawing before that. 480 00:29:20,160 --> 00:29:22,160 Of course, 481 00:29:22,160 --> 00:29:26,200 colour as light and colour as paint behave in quite different ways. 482 00:29:27,920 --> 00:29:30,840 It was artists like Monet and Seurat 483 00:29:30,840 --> 00:29:34,240 who taught us to make paint behave as light does 484 00:29:34,240 --> 00:29:37,120 by dividing up the colour on the canvas 485 00:29:37,120 --> 00:29:39,760 so that it works optically, 486 00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:43,920 only mixing in the actual process of seeing it. 487 00:29:43,920 --> 00:29:47,600 Seeing it is when the painting starts to live, 488 00:29:47,600 --> 00:29:49,400 that is when it begins. 489 00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:52,600 Everything else is like setting the stage 490 00:29:52,600 --> 00:29:55,040 before the curtain goes up on the drama itself. 491 00:29:56,520 --> 00:29:59,240 I really like her use of colour, 492 00:29:59,240 --> 00:30:02,200 and the fact that it's not narrative, 493 00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:04,040 or is not for me. 494 00:30:04,040 --> 00:30:07,080 It looks deceptively simple, you know, her sort of work 495 00:30:07,080 --> 00:30:09,640 where you go, "It's just a lot of stripes," and it's not. 496 00:30:09,640 --> 00:30:12,800 Or think it's been printed or something, you know, 497 00:30:12,800 --> 00:30:16,400 and when you take a closer look, it's, you know, done by hand. 498 00:30:16,400 --> 00:30:19,800 And so there's a lot of love and care gone into something 499 00:30:19,800 --> 00:30:22,640 that ostensibly has no story 500 00:30:22,640 --> 00:30:25,080 and is not a person, 501 00:30:25,080 --> 00:30:28,840 it's not a sort of classical Greek tale or something. 502 00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:32,080 Colours are absolutely interdependent. 503 00:30:32,080 --> 00:30:34,880 What is literally on the canvas is not all you can see. 504 00:30:35,880 --> 00:30:39,440 It's only the springboard which makes you see more. 505 00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:43,360 I was at Bridget's studio once looking at a stripe painting, 506 00:30:43,360 --> 00:30:46,360 and I noticed, incredibly, that each stripe seemed to have 507 00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:49,120 this very narrow black edge to it... 508 00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:53,480 ..and I thought, "God, that must be impossible to paint." 509 00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:55,280 And I asked her about it and she said, 510 00:30:55,280 --> 00:30:57,240 "No, actually, that's just in your mind. 511 00:30:57,240 --> 00:30:59,440 "This is something Leonardo discovered, 512 00:30:59,440 --> 00:31:01,400 "that when you put two colours together 513 00:31:01,400 --> 00:31:04,280 "that have a certain relationship on the colour spectrum, 514 00:31:04,280 --> 00:31:05,600 "your mind fills in... 515 00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:09,000 "..a dark line." 516 00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:13,240 Riley chose no smaller stage on which to debut her move to colour 517 00:31:13,240 --> 00:31:15,760 than the 1968 Venice Biennale, 518 00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:18,280 when she was selected to represent Great Britain 519 00:31:18,280 --> 00:31:20,480 alongside sculptor Phillip King. 520 00:31:22,200 --> 00:31:23,960 The gamble paid off, 521 00:31:23,960 --> 00:31:26,560 and she became the first British contemporary painter 522 00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:29,640 and the first woman to be awarded the international prize 523 00:31:29,640 --> 00:31:32,000 for painting at the Biennale. 524 00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:36,120 I think it must have come as a great surprise to a lot of people 525 00:31:36,120 --> 00:31:38,840 that this young British woman artist 526 00:31:38,840 --> 00:31:40,680 who is making this work 527 00:31:40,680 --> 00:31:44,080 that some people maybe associated with op art, 528 00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:46,960 which had been popularised in a way 529 00:31:46,960 --> 00:31:49,760 that sometimes makes art people nervous 530 00:31:49,760 --> 00:31:53,560 that their little sanctuary is... 531 00:31:53,560 --> 00:31:56,000 ..getting taken over by the barbarians. 532 00:31:56,000 --> 00:31:58,240 So it must have been something that, 533 00:31:58,240 --> 00:32:01,640 like Bridget's paintings, unsettled a few people. 534 00:32:02,920 --> 00:32:05,440 On the other hand, if you really were serious 535 00:32:05,440 --> 00:32:07,000 about painting in 1968... 536 00:32:09,240 --> 00:32:11,440 ..I can't really think of any other artist 537 00:32:11,440 --> 00:32:14,960 who was more deserving of winning a prize like that than Bridget. 538 00:32:17,200 --> 00:32:20,640 In the same year as Riley's triumph at the Venice Biennale, 539 00:32:20,640 --> 00:32:24,400 she and fellow artist Peter Sedgley created the Space. 540 00:32:24,400 --> 00:32:27,240 It was 1968, the Year of Revolution, 541 00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:29,160 and Riley had a radical idea 542 00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:32,800 inspired by the artist studios she'd seen in New York. 543 00:32:32,800 --> 00:32:35,400 Space would take over empty warehouses 544 00:32:35,400 --> 00:32:38,880 to create a utopian community of artists with more space to work. 545 00:32:40,160 --> 00:32:42,880 When I came to Britain, I realised 546 00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:46,640 that many, many artists work basically at home. 547 00:32:46,640 --> 00:32:48,960 They had maybe the basement of the house 548 00:32:48,960 --> 00:32:51,120 or the main room of the house was like... 549 00:32:51,120 --> 00:32:54,800 They were... The studios were in domesticated spaces 550 00:32:54,800 --> 00:32:58,600 because there weren't, at that time, 551 00:32:58,600 --> 00:33:02,040 obvious other spaces to use as studios. 552 00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:05,720 I was in the first Space studio, which was at St Katharine's Docks. 553 00:33:05,720 --> 00:33:09,280 I remember it as bitterly cold in the winter. 554 00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:11,280 Freezing, howling wind. 555 00:33:12,400 --> 00:33:14,640 It's interesting looking back 556 00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:18,960 because this was not something that was self-serving. 557 00:33:18,960 --> 00:33:20,680 It wasn't serving her. 558 00:33:20,680 --> 00:33:23,240 She was already successful enough 559 00:33:23,240 --> 00:33:25,480 and had, you know, had enough money 560 00:33:25,480 --> 00:33:28,160 to be able to have proper studio space. 561 00:33:28,160 --> 00:33:32,360 It was really providing space for people like myself 562 00:33:32,360 --> 00:33:35,920 who, you know, if you couldn't rent very modest spaces, 563 00:33:35,920 --> 00:33:37,840 you didn't have one. 564 00:33:37,840 --> 00:33:41,360 And so it served a fantastic function 565 00:33:41,360 --> 00:33:44,560 and, particularly during the late '60s 566 00:33:44,560 --> 00:33:47,600 and then through the '70s and '80s, 567 00:33:47,600 --> 00:33:49,360 these were particularly important. 568 00:33:49,360 --> 00:33:51,000 The scheme still goes on. 569 00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:54,000 Space Studios has over 600 artists... 570 00:33:55,360 --> 00:33:59,480 ..having studios that they may be share in London 571 00:33:59,480 --> 00:34:02,000 through disused buildings. 572 00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:06,560 Those steps need governmental support 573 00:34:06,560 --> 00:34:10,000 and also private enterprise to take a hand. 574 00:34:15,520 --> 00:34:17,280 You see, it's a marvellous studio. 575 00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:22,000 Bigger space made for bigger paintings and, during the '70s, 576 00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:26,240 Riley's work became more expansive and increasingly curvy. 577 00:34:27,800 --> 00:34:29,440 Her reputation grew, too, 578 00:34:29,440 --> 00:34:33,360 and, in 1971, she had her first retrospective exhibited 579 00:34:33,360 --> 00:34:35,800 in Germany, Italy and then London. 580 00:34:38,480 --> 00:34:41,640 Bridget had her first show at the Hayward 50 years ago, 581 00:34:41,640 --> 00:34:43,240 1971, 582 00:34:43,240 --> 00:34:48,320 and apparently the first guy waiting to buy a ticket was Francis Bacon. 583 00:34:48,320 --> 00:34:52,040 You know you think, "OK, who are the great British tradition 584 00:34:52,040 --> 00:34:54,240 "of painting that Bridget Riley might fit in?" 585 00:34:54,240 --> 00:34:57,920 Probably the last person you think of is Francis Bacon. 586 00:34:57,920 --> 00:35:02,920 But Bacon apparently said to Bridget that... 587 00:35:02,920 --> 00:35:05,080 ..he had always thought the only way 588 00:35:05,080 --> 00:35:08,120 you could really unsettle and disturb a viewer 589 00:35:08,120 --> 00:35:12,200 was by distorting and deforming the human body and face. 590 00:35:12,200 --> 00:35:14,800 That he'd learned from Bridget's paintings 591 00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:17,800 that actually there was a completely different way to do it 592 00:35:17,800 --> 00:35:21,600 where you didn't even depict the human form. 593 00:35:21,600 --> 00:35:25,560 You just made paintings that could destabilise people's perceptions. 594 00:35:28,880 --> 00:35:32,280 A far cry from the Cornish coast and the work of Seurat, 595 00:35:32,280 --> 00:35:36,560 the ancient art of Egypt and its fixed palette of just five colours 596 00:35:36,560 --> 00:35:40,240 triggered another turning point in Riley's career 597 00:35:40,240 --> 00:35:43,080 during a visit there in 1979. 598 00:35:43,080 --> 00:35:45,200 However, she was initially wary 599 00:35:45,200 --> 00:35:48,000 of putting her experience into her work. 600 00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:49,960 I did hesitate 601 00:35:49,960 --> 00:35:53,480 because I felt that perhaps this was stealing. 602 00:35:53,480 --> 00:35:56,320 It belonged to them. 603 00:35:56,320 --> 00:35:58,640 I shouldn't touch it. 604 00:35:58,640 --> 00:36:00,920 Then I thought of Picasso, 605 00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:06,280 and I thought he would have thought 606 00:36:06,280 --> 00:36:12,200 this was ridiculous inhibition on my part 607 00:36:12,200 --> 00:36:14,880 and so I should respond. 608 00:36:14,880 --> 00:36:16,960 So, I put away all... 609 00:36:18,920 --> 00:36:23,280 ..the postcards, photographs, 610 00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:26,320 everything that I had brought back 611 00:36:26,320 --> 00:36:28,480 and from... 612 00:36:30,040 --> 00:36:32,040 ..remembered sensations, 613 00:36:32,040 --> 00:36:37,560 I put together my version of the Egyptian palette. 614 00:36:45,880 --> 00:36:48,320 What I did discover after Egypt 615 00:36:48,320 --> 00:36:52,160 was not only the colours, but the way that the Egyptians 616 00:36:52,160 --> 00:36:54,600 organised their flat surfaces 617 00:36:54,600 --> 00:36:58,880 in what you might call a processional manner, 618 00:36:58,880 --> 00:37:03,400 that is to say their majestic figures walked across the areas. 619 00:37:04,440 --> 00:37:07,160 And in a sense, I had the same feeling 620 00:37:07,160 --> 00:37:10,360 that these colours proceed with a certain measure of pace. 621 00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:14,840 After a while, I felt I had exhausted the possibilities 622 00:37:14,840 --> 00:37:17,640 of what I could do within the stripe format 623 00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:20,320 and that I was very, very constricted 624 00:37:20,320 --> 00:37:23,680 in a kind of prison. I had to break out of it. 625 00:37:24,800 --> 00:37:28,000 I wanted to be able to move the eye 626 00:37:28,000 --> 00:37:30,040 in a wider variety of ways 627 00:37:30,040 --> 00:37:31,600 around the canvas. 628 00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:33,960 In Gentle Edge, 629 00:37:33,960 --> 00:37:38,720 I crossed some of the bands with a narrow diagonal hatching. 630 00:37:38,720 --> 00:37:41,520 This began to break down the structure. 631 00:37:42,560 --> 00:37:44,720 Working with her Egyptian palette, 632 00:37:44,720 --> 00:37:47,320 Riley supersized her work yet further, 633 00:37:47,320 --> 00:37:51,160 creating enormous murals for hospitals in Liverpool and London 634 00:37:51,160 --> 00:37:54,200 between 1983 and 2014. 635 00:37:55,760 --> 00:38:00,960 I'd visited my mother so many times in hospital in Cornwall, 636 00:38:00,960 --> 00:38:03,400 so I certainly wanted... 637 00:38:04,840 --> 00:38:08,000 ..to contribute something to the hospital, 638 00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:10,040 but I didn't know how. 639 00:38:10,040 --> 00:38:12,040 I knew it should be colour, 640 00:38:12,040 --> 00:38:16,320 I knew it should evoke life outside the hospital. 641 00:38:17,480 --> 00:38:19,560 The most important thing. 642 00:38:19,560 --> 00:38:23,360 And that to some extent meant skies, seas, fields, 643 00:38:23,360 --> 00:38:28,320 nature as we most generally understand it. 644 00:38:29,600 --> 00:38:35,680 But how to articulate that was very, very puzzling. 645 00:38:35,680 --> 00:38:39,760 It's funny that hospital paintings of Bridget's have tended to be these 646 00:38:39,760 --> 00:38:42,320 really long horizontal lines, 647 00:38:42,320 --> 00:38:45,880 which do suggest a kind of continuity... 648 00:38:47,400 --> 00:38:49,440 ..which, maybe if you're in a hospital, 649 00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:50,720 is a nice thing to think about. 650 00:38:50,720 --> 00:38:52,280 In the early '80s, 651 00:38:52,280 --> 00:38:55,360 Riley found her style at odds with the aesthetic excesses 652 00:38:55,360 --> 00:38:56,880 of the new decade 653 00:38:56,880 --> 00:38:59,880 as the focus in art shifted to neo expressionist works 654 00:38:59,880 --> 00:39:03,840 by the likes of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Julian Schnabel. 655 00:39:03,840 --> 00:39:06,720 There's a great variety for Bridget Riley. 656 00:39:06,720 --> 00:39:08,920 There's the huge exhibition at the Hayward, 657 00:39:08,920 --> 00:39:11,120 but you also have much smaller exhibitions 658 00:39:11,120 --> 00:39:14,600 where, for example, in Ayrshire, in Ayr. 659 00:39:14,600 --> 00:39:20,960 That must have been the beginning of the '80s. 660 00:39:20,960 --> 00:39:24,040 People were not liking my work very much. 661 00:39:24,040 --> 00:39:28,680 They weren't... It was doldrums 662 00:39:28,680 --> 00:39:30,640 and that does... Must happen and does happen 663 00:39:30,640 --> 00:39:33,760 in a painter's life, you know? 664 00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:41,080 And so I was very glad of the chance to go somewhere else, 665 00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:43,280 and I went up there and... 666 00:39:44,960 --> 00:39:47,360 ..gave a talk. 667 00:39:47,360 --> 00:39:50,720 There were 15 people in the audience, 668 00:39:50,720 --> 00:39:53,400 but they asked me such good questions. 669 00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:54,840 We had a ball. 670 00:39:54,840 --> 00:39:56,680 We had a great, great time. 671 00:39:56,680 --> 00:39:59,760 I thought we wouldn't find this gallery, 672 00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:03,520 but they said, "Oh, yes, you will, we'll signpost it." 673 00:40:04,920 --> 00:40:09,400 And so they got the AA to put up signs 674 00:40:09,400 --> 00:40:12,360 saying "Bridget Riley Exhibition." 675 00:40:15,400 --> 00:40:16,760 Riley stuck to her guns 676 00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:19,800 and continued to experiment with shapes and colours. 677 00:40:19,800 --> 00:40:22,880 She experienced a renaissance in the 1990s 678 00:40:22,880 --> 00:40:26,520 and, in 2017, created her largest work to date 679 00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:29,120 at a contemporary art museum in Texas - 680 00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:31,600 revisiting the Egyptian palette she'd used 681 00:40:31,600 --> 00:40:35,560 in the Royal Liverpool University Hospital over 30 years earlier. 682 00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:37,920 The best piece of work of hers I ever saw 683 00:40:37,920 --> 00:40:42,280 was that the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Donald Judd's foundation, 684 00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:46,440 and it's, like, this amazing... 685 00:40:46,440 --> 00:40:48,320 This is out in the desert. 686 00:40:48,320 --> 00:40:52,120 And there's just like this sort of kind of ex army base 687 00:40:52,120 --> 00:40:55,160 and, on the walls, there's just a stripe 688 00:40:55,160 --> 00:40:58,280 that goes... These stripes that just go all the way around. 689 00:40:58,280 --> 00:41:00,240 And so you see the stripes 690 00:41:00,240 --> 00:41:02,920 and then you see the windows with the desert in the background. 691 00:41:02,920 --> 00:41:06,640 It is phenomenal, it's fantastic, and it makes you understand 692 00:41:06,640 --> 00:41:09,240 about Bridget Riley's big ideas. 693 00:41:09,240 --> 00:41:11,160 She wasn't painting a picture. 694 00:41:11,160 --> 00:41:13,280 She's not painting an area. 695 00:41:13,280 --> 00:41:16,560 She's painting a whole idea. 696 00:41:16,560 --> 00:41:19,680 Just before the mural was unveiled in Texas, 697 00:41:19,680 --> 00:41:23,040 Riley gave BBC cameras access to her London studio 698 00:41:23,040 --> 00:41:27,680 to discuss her process in making a work more than 120 metres long. 699 00:41:29,120 --> 00:41:31,480 I often make notes... 700 00:41:32,680 --> 00:41:35,720 ..to just helped me think something through 701 00:41:35,720 --> 00:41:40,000 and here I've got one before the 702 00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:43,160 black bumper bar is put in, 703 00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:45,520 in which I've taken... 704 00:41:46,440 --> 00:41:49,600 ..one square of blue out of here 705 00:41:49,600 --> 00:41:56,080 and put it into two... Another square of yellow down there. 706 00:41:56,080 --> 00:41:59,120 I don't know what it looked like, 707 00:41:59,120 --> 00:42:01,520 but it was a thought. 708 00:42:01,520 --> 00:42:03,960 It's an architecture of art. 709 00:42:03,960 --> 00:42:06,240 You know, this is not just painting in the studio 710 00:42:06,240 --> 00:42:07,760 solely from one subject, 711 00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:10,240 but it's an immersion in something completely different, 712 00:42:10,240 --> 00:42:13,000 and it's, you know, it gets to the core of what Bridget does so well. 713 00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:16,880 She's looking at form, she's looking at intellectual approaches to art, 714 00:42:16,880 --> 00:42:20,440 she's immersing herself in writing about abstract painting 715 00:42:20,440 --> 00:42:22,440 and literature, and poetry. 716 00:42:22,440 --> 00:42:25,560 I mean, it's a complete myriad of different things. 717 00:42:25,560 --> 00:42:29,320 In recent years, Riley has returned to the sort of black and white work 718 00:42:29,320 --> 00:42:30,840 she was making in the '60s, 719 00:42:30,840 --> 00:42:33,560 once again drawing on nature for inspiration. 720 00:42:38,080 --> 00:42:41,960 The curves and movement of this row of Tamarisk trees, 721 00:42:41,960 --> 00:42:45,400 which the wind seems to pick up a series of waves, 722 00:42:45,400 --> 00:42:49,440 almost, as a dancing freeze. 723 00:42:50,880 --> 00:42:55,360 The wind is such a big force down here, does draw sometimes 724 00:42:55,360 --> 00:42:58,840 with the landscape, 725 00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:03,960 just draws patterns of indescribable beauty. 726 00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:08,160 When there's a little breeze that will come, 727 00:43:08,160 --> 00:43:14,040 especially if the long grasses pick up on, you know, 728 00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:17,560 a rhythm that repeats across as the breeze goes. 729 00:43:20,640 --> 00:43:24,920 I thought that you might like to see this 730 00:43:24,920 --> 00:43:29,560 because, yesterday, when we were by the sea 731 00:43:29,560 --> 00:43:33,640 and walking along the Tamarisk lane, 732 00:43:33,640 --> 00:43:38,800 there was a kind of cross movement of light and shade, 733 00:43:38,800 --> 00:43:44,280 and light and shade, which certainly did not in any way 734 00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:48,200 consciously inspire this painting 735 00:43:48,200 --> 00:43:51,360 but as part of the many sensations 736 00:43:51,360 --> 00:43:54,840 of walking and passing by things, 737 00:43:54,840 --> 00:43:57,400 there is a movement in it, 738 00:43:57,400 --> 00:44:01,480 quite elusive, of gathering dark... 739 00:44:02,600 --> 00:44:06,560 ..and giving way to light lighter passages. 740 00:44:06,560 --> 00:44:12,960 Nature is the origin and feeds what I make, 741 00:44:12,960 --> 00:44:16,000 but it's not direct 742 00:44:16,000 --> 00:44:21,800 and so one does not lead straight to the other. 743 00:44:21,800 --> 00:44:26,200 If I know what I'm going to get... 744 00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:30,680 ..I lose interest. 745 00:44:30,680 --> 00:44:35,120 I need just a little small connecting point 746 00:44:35,120 --> 00:44:40,000 from the present known that I have in the studio... 747 00:44:41,560 --> 00:44:46,920 ..to an unknown that lies just beyond 748 00:44:46,920 --> 00:44:48,960 what I have already seen. 749 00:44:48,960 --> 00:44:52,120 This experience of say of looking at a painting 750 00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:54,000 and seeing one type of order... 751 00:44:56,000 --> 00:44:59,040 ..and then suddenly seeing that order switch 752 00:44:59,040 --> 00:45:01,240 and you see another arrangement 753 00:45:01,240 --> 00:45:04,520 within these shapes and forms on a canvas, 754 00:45:04,520 --> 00:45:06,720 then it switches again. 755 00:45:06,720 --> 00:45:10,960 That's something anyone who's ever looked at a body of moving water 756 00:45:10,960 --> 00:45:13,720 in the sunlight understands, 757 00:45:13,720 --> 00:45:16,240 this constant making of 758 00:45:16,240 --> 00:45:19,960 patterns that then fall apart and reform again. 759 00:45:19,960 --> 00:45:23,640 We all share these kinds of experiences in our memory, 760 00:45:23,640 --> 00:45:27,680 and I think sometimes some of the things that Bridget makes, 761 00:45:27,680 --> 00:45:29,840 the experiences she creates, 762 00:45:29,840 --> 00:45:31,760 the sensations that her paintings 763 00:45:31,760 --> 00:45:33,400 allow us to access 764 00:45:33,400 --> 00:45:35,960 can recall some of those moments. 765 00:45:38,400 --> 00:45:40,040 How important to you... 766 00:45:41,360 --> 00:45:44,200 ..is it that many people experience your work? 767 00:45:44,200 --> 00:45:46,480 You know, if it's in public spaces 768 00:45:46,480 --> 00:45:49,240 and I wonder what you feel like when you go through a public space 769 00:45:49,240 --> 00:45:53,000 where you've made a beautiful piece of work and it's appreciated. 770 00:45:54,200 --> 00:45:56,880 Do you get a sense of pride every time you see it? 771 00:45:56,880 --> 00:46:01,920 Well, yes. I have had a great treat 772 00:46:01,920 --> 00:46:09,120 in that I was invited to do something 773 00:46:09,120 --> 00:46:11,760 for the Annenberg Court, 774 00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:15,280 the Getty Entrance to the National Gallery 775 00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:20,640 AND I must admit, I have longed to do something about it 776 00:46:20,640 --> 00:46:23,520 for years and years and years. 777 00:46:23,520 --> 00:46:26,600 You didn't say, "Can I have that wall over there? 778 00:46:26,600 --> 00:46:29,600 "Can I have that wall over there?" No, no, no. 779 00:46:29,600 --> 00:46:32,320 The gallery has such a lot to offer. 780 00:46:32,320 --> 00:46:36,160 If people could only find a way of, 781 00:46:36,160 --> 00:46:39,680 in a way, daring to come and have a look at it. 782 00:46:39,680 --> 00:46:42,080 And your work is what welcomes them in. 783 00:46:42,080 --> 00:46:44,680 It's very unusual, at the National Gallery, 784 00:46:44,680 --> 00:46:46,840 that we ask an artist to produce something 785 00:46:46,840 --> 00:46:48,920 that is essentially permanent. 786 00:46:48,920 --> 00:46:52,000 There are one or two precedents, but it's fairly rare. 787 00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:55,360 Riley's enormous mural, entitled Messengers, 788 00:46:55,360 --> 00:46:58,760 was installed in 2019 789 00:46:58,760 --> 00:47:01,240 when she revealed how its title was inspired by the clouds 790 00:47:01,240 --> 00:47:03,840 in a painting by John Constable. 791 00:47:03,840 --> 00:47:05,840 It was a wonderful moment. 792 00:47:06,840 --> 00:47:09,040 It's such a fantastic painting. 793 00:47:09,040 --> 00:47:13,480 You can see the light falling from the clear blue sky above 794 00:47:13,480 --> 00:47:16,080 on these upper parts of all these clouds, 795 00:47:16,080 --> 00:47:20,320 and you can see the darker ones underneath, 796 00:47:20,320 --> 00:47:23,000 these little detached things of messengers. 797 00:47:23,000 --> 00:47:25,560 This is a messenger, I think, going across there. 798 00:47:25,560 --> 00:47:29,200 What it does in the whole painting is it creates, 799 00:47:29,200 --> 00:47:32,400 helps to create, a huge feeling of space. 800 00:47:32,400 --> 00:47:35,120 And that's where the title came from? 801 00:47:35,120 --> 00:47:37,440 Suddenly, it was a sort of eureka moment 802 00:47:37,440 --> 00:47:39,560 where Messengers kind of emerged? 803 00:47:39,560 --> 00:47:42,360 Yes, it was simply wonderful. 804 00:47:42,360 --> 00:47:45,400 I particularly like it when it's very bright and you're seeing it 805 00:47:45,400 --> 00:47:48,000 from sort of further back, and it's really glowing. 806 00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:49,880 And I think when it's like that, 807 00:47:49,880 --> 00:47:54,280 you get that sense of these discs floating on this white background 808 00:47:54,280 --> 00:47:56,560 and you also get these after images. 809 00:47:56,560 --> 00:48:00,520 So the whole of Messengers is sort of moving in front of your eyes. 810 00:48:00,520 --> 00:48:02,200 It's almost like it's dancing. 811 00:48:02,200 --> 00:48:04,960 You need to devote a little bit of time to it. 812 00:48:04,960 --> 00:48:06,080 It's very enjoyable. 813 00:48:06,080 --> 00:48:08,120 I think it's very uplifting. 814 00:48:08,120 --> 00:48:10,440 In the same year as Messengers was unveiled, 815 00:48:10,440 --> 00:48:13,200 the Hayward Gallery in London hosted another 816 00:48:13,200 --> 00:48:16,720 major Riley retrospective, almost 50 years since her first one there. 817 00:48:17,760 --> 00:48:23,320 We live in the era of the drive-by gallery visit 818 00:48:23,320 --> 00:48:25,960 where people just kind of cruise by and look at this thing here 819 00:48:25,960 --> 00:48:27,920 and look at that thing there. 820 00:48:27,920 --> 00:48:30,880 And one of the wonderful things about Bridget Riley's show 821 00:48:30,880 --> 00:48:33,320 is that the audiences are actually looking 822 00:48:33,320 --> 00:48:36,160 really carefully at everything they see... 823 00:48:37,920 --> 00:48:40,040 ..partly because their experience of looking 824 00:48:40,040 --> 00:48:41,960 is changing as they're looking. 825 00:48:41,960 --> 00:48:44,840 Her works really seem to change the space you're looking at. 826 00:48:44,840 --> 00:48:46,360 They seem to come off the wall 827 00:48:46,360 --> 00:48:48,400 and enter the space you're in, 828 00:48:48,400 --> 00:48:51,560 and you can't really get that from looking at an image on a phone 829 00:48:51,560 --> 00:48:54,400 or a computer, or in a book even. 830 00:48:54,400 --> 00:48:57,400 Riley's interest in creating a fresh way of seeing 831 00:48:57,400 --> 00:49:00,280 roots her very modern work in an artistic tradition 832 00:49:00,280 --> 00:49:02,520 stretching back centuries. 833 00:49:02,520 --> 00:49:05,320 Bridget is arguably one of the artists most steeped in the history 834 00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:08,200 of art, and I think that's the most interesting thing about her lineage 835 00:49:08,200 --> 00:49:10,480 is that she's taken all of this work, 836 00:49:10,480 --> 00:49:13,640 she's really studied it and looked at it critically, analytically, 837 00:49:13,640 --> 00:49:16,320 artistically, but put it into her own language. 838 00:49:16,320 --> 00:49:20,440 My work has certainly drawn 839 00:49:20,440 --> 00:49:24,680 on the work of painters in the past. 840 00:49:26,160 --> 00:49:28,480 I've enjoyed enormously... 841 00:49:30,480 --> 00:49:32,680 ..exhibitions at the National Gallery. 842 00:49:32,680 --> 00:49:39,120 I've travelled to see paintings in other countries, 843 00:49:39,120 --> 00:49:42,400 and I would say the past painting 844 00:49:42,400 --> 00:49:46,840 has given me a lot of friends. 845 00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:52,160 Some of the figures, say, that are Bridget's kind of Hall of Fame 846 00:49:52,160 --> 00:49:55,960 in terms of artists who, like her, were really interested in 847 00:49:55,960 --> 00:50:00,400 research and analysis, and the colour, and colour relationships. 848 00:50:00,400 --> 00:50:03,600 And there are some great 19th century French artists, 849 00:50:03,600 --> 00:50:07,320 including Cezanne and Seurat, and Monet. 850 00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:09,600 And then in the 20th century, 851 00:50:09,600 --> 00:50:12,840 I think Mondrian, who was then taking more of a 852 00:50:12,840 --> 00:50:17,080 stripped-down geometric idea of colour relationships. 853 00:50:17,080 --> 00:50:19,400 When I look at Bridget's work, 854 00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:23,960 I see her connectedness with the great art of the past 855 00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:28,760 has been, in its radicality, in its uniqueness, 856 00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:34,600 I don't see it as with some artists as a clear derivation 857 00:50:34,600 --> 00:50:36,600 of something, in the spirit 858 00:50:36,600 --> 00:50:39,240 of what happened is like what 859 00:50:39,240 --> 00:50:41,560 Picasso did, or what Cezanne did. 860 00:50:41,560 --> 00:50:43,880 What Seurat did. 861 00:50:43,880 --> 00:50:46,200 It's not in the appearance of the work at all. 862 00:50:46,200 --> 00:50:50,560 It's in that spirit of invention and innovation. 863 00:50:53,240 --> 00:50:55,800 Another radical who inspired Riley 864 00:50:55,800 --> 00:50:59,120 was Masaccio, the most revolutionary painter of the Renaissance. 865 00:51:01,120 --> 00:51:04,800 Masaccio laid a foundation stone of Western painting... 866 00:51:06,560 --> 00:51:09,720 ..and as I'm a western painter, we're at each end of the tradition. 867 00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:15,720 He's interested in light very differently, of course, from me 868 00:51:15,720 --> 00:51:18,520 but we do both have an interest 869 00:51:18,520 --> 00:51:22,040 in light, in surface, 870 00:51:22,040 --> 00:51:24,120 in different notions of depth. 871 00:51:27,560 --> 00:51:31,920 Although superficially, it might look as though we're very different, 872 00:51:31,920 --> 00:51:34,160 we share many painterly interests. 873 00:51:35,720 --> 00:51:38,920 Something else the renaissance inspired in Riley 874 00:51:38,920 --> 00:51:41,120 is the use of a studio of assistants, 875 00:51:41,120 --> 00:51:44,600 something that was unheard of for a painter in the 1960s. 876 00:51:45,760 --> 00:51:50,360 What Bridget was doing was something much closer to what say 877 00:51:50,360 --> 00:51:54,040 a sculptor does when commissioning a large work. 878 00:51:54,040 --> 00:51:58,720 When Henry Moore was working, he didn't make the bronze sculptures 879 00:51:58,720 --> 00:52:00,200 that we know him for. 880 00:52:00,200 --> 00:52:04,160 He made maquettes, he made... 881 00:52:04,160 --> 00:52:07,600 He made models from which other people executed 882 00:52:07,600 --> 00:52:10,760 the work that we say is his, that is his, 883 00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:15,360 and in a sense, that's similar to what Bridget was doing. 884 00:52:15,360 --> 00:52:19,840 Today, many, many artists use other people to make works, 885 00:52:19,840 --> 00:52:21,800 and we take that for granted, 886 00:52:21,800 --> 00:52:24,360 but when Bridget first started doing that, 887 00:52:24,360 --> 00:52:26,240 that was a very, very radical thing. 888 00:52:27,800 --> 00:52:32,200 In a sense, I get drawn too much 889 00:52:32,200 --> 00:52:35,000 into the actual execution 890 00:52:35,000 --> 00:52:36,800 and I have to be detached. 891 00:52:37,920 --> 00:52:40,000 I have seen how the thing 892 00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:45,400 can take shape in study form 893 00:52:45,400 --> 00:52:49,600 and in cartoon form and in decision-making. 894 00:52:49,600 --> 00:52:52,400 I think, for Bridget, who is a really, really serious, 895 00:52:52,400 --> 00:52:54,320 serious, serious, serious artist 896 00:52:54,320 --> 00:52:57,200 and I think if we knew the background behind every painting, 897 00:52:57,200 --> 00:53:00,600 behind every colour wave, behind every mood and every emotion, 898 00:53:00,600 --> 00:53:03,400 we wouldn't be able to feel it ourselves. 899 00:53:03,400 --> 00:53:06,440 We would be pressurised by her emotions. 900 00:53:06,440 --> 00:53:09,840 And it's better that we look at it and we feel the vibrations, 901 00:53:09,840 --> 00:53:13,160 we feel the emotion through the colour, 902 00:53:13,160 --> 00:53:17,960 we understand it for how we feel, not how she felt. 903 00:53:21,760 --> 00:53:23,360 At the start of a painting, 904 00:53:23,360 --> 00:53:25,120 I don't know the end of it. 905 00:53:25,120 --> 00:53:28,760 And as long as I know the point of origin, 906 00:53:28,760 --> 00:53:31,440 the initial problem, which is an intellectual one... 907 00:53:33,600 --> 00:53:37,160 Are you confident that the way you are working in at the moment 908 00:53:37,160 --> 00:53:39,240 is going to provide you with that? 909 00:53:39,240 --> 00:53:42,440 Well, if it doesn't, it's a lack of my insight. 910 00:53:42,440 --> 00:53:44,040 It's a failure on my part. 911 00:53:44,040 --> 00:53:47,320 The vein itself is rich enough... 912 00:53:47,320 --> 00:53:52,840 ..for me and for, I think, several lifetimes of work. 913 00:53:52,840 --> 00:53:54,520 Oh, heavens, yes. 914 00:53:54,520 --> 00:53:57,760 But whether I continue to... 915 00:54:01,560 --> 00:54:05,920 ..have the clarity and the lucidity to perceive what I'm doing 916 00:54:05,920 --> 00:54:07,360 is another matter. 917 00:54:09,480 --> 00:54:12,880 Do you see things that you didn't see before, when you look back 918 00:54:12,880 --> 00:54:14,840 at your paintings, maybe from 40 or 50 years? 919 00:54:14,840 --> 00:54:16,320 Do you look at them differently? 920 00:54:16,320 --> 00:54:18,000 Not always. 921 00:54:18,000 --> 00:54:21,240 Sometimes they're entirely old friends. 922 00:54:21,240 --> 00:54:26,840 Other times, I see things in them 923 00:54:26,840 --> 00:54:28,440 which I didn't intend, 924 00:54:28,440 --> 00:54:31,560 didn't see, didn't hope for, 925 00:54:31,560 --> 00:54:33,960 didn't... Weren't, apparently. 926 00:54:33,960 --> 00:54:38,000 And that, you know, is very tempting. 927 00:54:38,000 --> 00:54:43,640 And so especially when I think that, 928 00:54:43,640 --> 00:54:45,840 you know, with the time that I have still, 929 00:54:45,840 --> 00:54:48,880 I want to make the most use of it 930 00:54:48,880 --> 00:54:52,480 and actually explore further 931 00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:55,280 some of the possibilities I see. 932 00:54:57,240 --> 00:55:00,440 Almost 60 years after her first solo show, 933 00:55:00,440 --> 00:55:05,680 Bridget Riley is still innovating, painting, publishing and exhibiting. 934 00:55:05,680 --> 00:55:08,440 She has won numerous prestigious awards 935 00:55:08,440 --> 00:55:11,360 and was made a companion of honour in 1998. 936 00:55:13,200 --> 00:55:15,280 I think she's a phenomenal woman, 937 00:55:15,280 --> 00:55:17,000 phenomenal artist, 938 00:55:17,000 --> 00:55:20,360 and the fact that she keeps going and keeps going is fantastic. 939 00:55:20,360 --> 00:55:24,200 She was ground-breaking and she did something seminal within art, 940 00:55:24,200 --> 00:55:26,200 so people only look at that 941 00:55:26,200 --> 00:55:29,120 and think of that, and they think that it's, like, 942 00:55:29,120 --> 00:55:32,200 one idea, like something you know that anyone could do. 943 00:55:32,200 --> 00:55:36,400 "Do some stripes." Let them try and do, let them try and invent it. 944 00:55:36,400 --> 00:55:38,040 Let them try and believe in it. 945 00:55:38,040 --> 00:55:41,720 Let them pursue it for the rest of their life and see how far they get. 946 00:55:41,720 --> 00:55:45,200 You know, Bridget Riley's dedication and focus is pretty phenomenal. 947 00:55:45,200 --> 00:55:47,240 What she has avoided is the pitfall 948 00:55:47,240 --> 00:55:49,960 of trying to be commercially highly successful 949 00:55:49,960 --> 00:55:51,840 at the expense of her longevity. 950 00:55:51,840 --> 00:55:53,160 There it is, the Bridget Riley, 951 00:55:53,160 --> 00:55:55,400 and I'm going to start with some interest here. 952 00:55:55,400 --> 00:55:58,480 There is a considerable growth in the value of her pictures. 953 00:55:58,480 --> 00:56:02,480 Currently, the record price at auction is over £4 million. 954 00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:05,440 At £1,250,000. 955 00:56:05,440 --> 00:56:08,280 Please, thank you. It's ironic in a way that Bridget, 956 00:56:08,280 --> 00:56:09,840 now at the age that she is, 957 00:56:09,840 --> 00:56:12,640 should be, you know, almost one of the newer hot artists. 958 00:56:12,640 --> 00:56:15,000 And she's firmly in this kind of grouping 959 00:56:15,000 --> 00:56:18,000 of great 20th century kind of British female artists now 960 00:56:18,000 --> 00:56:20,720 and enjoying great success alongside younger artists 961 00:56:20,720 --> 00:56:23,080 like Cecily Brown or Tracey Emin, for example. 962 00:56:23,080 --> 00:56:27,080 More than anything, she didn't want to be thought of as a woman artist. 963 00:56:27,080 --> 00:56:30,680 She did not want to be singled out because of her sex. 964 00:56:30,680 --> 00:56:36,360 She'd completely understand her wish for that at the time. 965 00:56:36,360 --> 00:56:38,920 But from the first day I was in art school, 966 00:56:38,920 --> 00:56:42,640 through all of my years of teaching, 967 00:56:42,640 --> 00:56:45,200 a minimum of 50% of the students were women. 968 00:56:46,880 --> 00:56:52,040 But the number who actually succeeded to build careers 969 00:56:52,040 --> 00:56:56,080 was tiny in comparison, 970 00:56:56,080 --> 00:56:57,840 certainly not so much. 971 00:56:57,840 --> 00:57:02,000 Today, we see a giant change, over the last 20 years. 972 00:57:02,000 --> 00:57:04,120 But for many, many years, 973 00:57:04,120 --> 00:57:06,520 that was not the case. 974 00:57:06,520 --> 00:57:09,960 I think Bridget's achievement as a woman artist in Britain 975 00:57:09,960 --> 00:57:11,640 is absolutely phenomenal. 976 00:57:15,440 --> 00:57:20,760 You said, in 2009, for the last 50 years, it has been my belief 977 00:57:20,760 --> 00:57:25,320 that, as a modern artist, you should make a contribution 978 00:57:25,320 --> 00:57:27,360 to the art of your time, 979 00:57:27,360 --> 00:57:29,560 even if it's only a small one. 980 00:57:29,560 --> 00:57:33,240 So what do you think your contribution has been? 981 00:57:33,240 --> 00:57:36,240 I couldn't be... I couldn't say. 982 00:57:36,240 --> 00:57:38,560 That's for other people to. 983 00:57:38,560 --> 00:57:40,440 Very modest. 984 00:57:40,440 --> 00:57:42,840 No, it's just as I wouldn't know. 985 00:57:45,840 --> 00:57:49,680 She's shown that the tradition of art isn't static. 986 00:57:49,680 --> 00:57:51,040 It isn't dead. 987 00:57:52,480 --> 00:57:54,680 There aren't people, for the most part, 988 00:57:54,680 --> 00:57:56,800 who are trying to paint like Bridget. 989 00:57:56,800 --> 00:57:59,760 It's not a question of a school of Riley kind of thing. 990 00:57:59,760 --> 00:58:02,720 She's created this incredible example 991 00:58:02,720 --> 00:58:07,080 of what can be done with the most minimal means 992 00:58:07,080 --> 00:58:10,920 and yet sometimes this incredibly playful, 993 00:58:10,920 --> 00:58:14,280 but also explosive, effect. 994 00:58:14,280 --> 00:58:19,640 I suppose I hope that, when you ask me if I could make a contribution, 995 00:58:19,640 --> 00:58:23,360 that I'm hoping that I can, 996 00:58:23,360 --> 00:58:27,320 in some way, to order, stability, 997 00:58:27,320 --> 00:58:29,960 even to pleasure, 998 00:58:29,960 --> 00:58:32,600 to have joy of living. 999 00:58:33,920 --> 00:58:37,680 The great privilege we have in being alive.