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Bridget Riley: Reconnaissance
This book documents Bridget Riley's current exhibition at New York's Dia Center for the Arts, Reconnaissance, which brings together seminal paintings from the early 1960s, landmark works esteemed via word-of-mouth but not often seen. These works are shown together with others from the later 60s and 70s to chart the early career of this highly influential but--especially in the US--all-too-little-known artist. Riley's dynamically abstract paintings from the 1960s and 1970s long ago secured her a permanent place in the history of postwar art. Despite this widespread acclaim, Riley's work has been exhibited in the US only on a few occasions. In Reconnaissance, the artist's first solo exhibition to originate in the US in decades, the public will be able to examine a selection from Riley's compelling body of early work. Additionally, Riley has executed a wall drawing for Dia's galleries, which is documented here.
Hardcover
First published March 2, 2001
4 people want to read
About the author
Lynne Cooke
111 books1 followerLynne Cooke is the Senior Curator, Special Projects in Modern Art, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. Prior to her present position, she was the deputy director and chief curator at the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain, (2008 to 2012) and the curator at the Dia Art Foundation (1991 to 2008). Born in Geelong, Australia, Cooke received her B.A. from Melbourne University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in art history from the Courtauld Institute, University of London, and has taught and lectured regularly at the University College London, Syracuse University, Yale University, Columbia University, and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. She was a co-curator of the Venice Biennale in 1986, the Carnegie International in 1991, and was artistic director of the Biennale of Sydney in 1996.
From 1979 to 1989, Cooke was a Lecturer in the History of Art Department at University College London, and prior to her move to the United States and appointment as curator at the Dia Art Foundation in 1991, Dr. Cooke established herself during the mid-80s as a writer on contemporary artists of the period, including British sculptors Anish Kapoor and Bill Woodrow, and American artist Allan McCollum. During her years at Dia, she has worked to bring greater recognition to women artists who contributed to the minimalist period, organizing exhibitions and publishing writings on Jo Baer, Louise Bourgeois, Bridget Riley, and Agnes Martin, among others; and in addition to developing historical projects with artists of the established Dia collection, nearly all of whom are male and became prominent during the 1960s, she has organized significant exhibitions aimed at introducing European artists of the 1980s to the American public, such as Rosemarie Trockel, Katharina Fritsch, Juan Muñoz, and Thomas Schütte.
From the mid-1990s forward, Cooke has organized a number of exhibitions of younger American women artists, including Jessica Stockholder, Ann Hamilton, and Roni Horn, and worked on several projects with male artists all born outside of the United States. In addition to her work at the Dia Center for the Arts, she has curated exhibitions at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol; Whitechapel Art Gallery and Hayward Gallery, London; Third Eye Center, Glasgow; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Tamayo Museum, Mexico; and elsewhere. In 2006, she was the recipient of the Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, and in 2007, she co-curated the exhibition "Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years," at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She has written widely about contemporary art in exhibition catalogues and in Artforum, Artscribe, The Burlington Magazine, and Parkett, among other magazines.
(from Wikipedia)
From 1979 to 1989, Cooke was a Lecturer in the History of Art Department at University College London, and prior to her move to the United States and appointment as curator at the Dia Art Foundation in 1991, Dr. Cooke established herself during the mid-80s as a writer on contemporary artists of the period, including British sculptors Anish Kapoor and Bill Woodrow, and American artist Allan McCollum. During her years at Dia, she has worked to bring greater recognition to women artists who contributed to the minimalist period, organizing exhibitions and publishing writings on Jo Baer, Louise Bourgeois, Bridget Riley, and Agnes Martin, among others; and in addition to developing historical projects with artists of the established Dia collection, nearly all of whom are male and became prominent during the 1960s, she has organized significant exhibitions aimed at introducing European artists of the 1980s to the American public, such as Rosemarie Trockel, Katharina Fritsch, Juan Muñoz, and Thomas Schütte.
From the mid-1990s forward, Cooke has organized a number of exhibitions of younger American women artists, including Jessica Stockholder, Ann Hamilton, and Roni Horn, and worked on several projects with male artists all born outside of the United States. In addition to her work at the Dia Center for the Arts, she has curated exhibitions at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol; Whitechapel Art Gallery and Hayward Gallery, London; Third Eye Center, Glasgow; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Tamayo Museum, Mexico; and elsewhere. In 2006, she was the recipient of the Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, and in 2007, she co-curated the exhibition "Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years," at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She has written widely about contemporary art in exhibition catalogues and in Artforum, Artscribe, The Burlington Magazine, and Parkett, among other magazines.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 19, 2019
080316: this encourages me to look at her work yet again, to see the effect of Jackson Pollock, Mondrian, Cezanne, to see her rigorous, experimental, visually challenging work. originally her work was black and white used for optical effects, here I see, I love, her later work in colours such as 'cataract' or 'song of orpheus'. this essay also refers to merleau-ponty and his essay 'eye and mind', which helps illuminate, helps understand, her more recent work. she is not a one trick artist, not simply a visual provocateur, who discovers a stylistic trick and everything comes from that- she is at least as thoughtful, as experimental as cezanne...
July 6, 2013
I love writing about art. That is, I love to read what others have thought about it, and I love to record my own impressions as well. There's a skill involved, which has to do with the measured use of appropriate terminology to explicate something which is, actually, its own explanation. If in doubt, trust the work to speak for itself. Whereof we cannot speak, we must remain silent.
Sadly, exhibition curators rarely observe Wittgenstein's caveat. Why should they ? They're paid by the line , or at least by the caption, and all too frequently allow their own sense of obligation to their job to spiral out of control into the realms of pretension and extraordinary literary exaggeration. This is what appears to have happened In this book, effectively the *catalogue raisonee* of a Riley exhibition at a New York gallery, A brilliantly succinct summation of Riley's stylistic approach, related to the history of seeing in art, is followed by a series of bizarre assertions about precisely what aesthetic and philosophical points her paintings supposedly make. The language is of the kind which has traditionally been used to discredit art critics for insubstantiality, and in this case I have to say it is cited with some justice.
I've recently finished reading Laura Cumming's "A Face to the World", which is an exemplary piece of jargon-free writing on some complex art history and technique. If she can manage something like that for the whole history of self-portraiture, surely the work of one painter - even one as revolutionary and important as Riley - can similarly be expressed in accessible and non- parodiable terms ?
Sadly, exhibition curators rarely observe Wittgenstein's caveat. Why should they ? They're paid by the line , or at least by the caption, and all too frequently allow their own sense of obligation to their job to spiral out of control into the realms of pretension and extraordinary literary exaggeration. This is what appears to have happened In this book, effectively the *catalogue raisonee* of a Riley exhibition at a New York gallery, A brilliantly succinct summation of Riley's stylistic approach, related to the history of seeing in art, is followed by a series of bizarre assertions about precisely what aesthetic and philosophical points her paintings supposedly make. The language is of the kind which has traditionally been used to discredit art critics for insubstantiality, and in this case I have to say it is cited with some justice.
I've recently finished reading Laura Cumming's "A Face to the World", which is an exemplary piece of jargon-free writing on some complex art history and technique. If she can manage something like that for the whole history of self-portraiture, surely the work of one painter - even one as revolutionary and important as Riley - can similarly be expressed in accessible and non- parodiable terms ?
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews