EMBODIED VISIONS: BRIDGET RILEY, OP ART AND THE SIXTIES by Frances Follin [2004]

Thames & Hudson [London, 2004]. Softcover, 263pp. 17 x 23 cm.

In this account, based on eight years of research, art historian Frances Follin examines contemporary reviews of Bridget Riley's work to reveal the complex associations between her paintings and the culture in which they were produced. 

Far from being the peripheral art form that some later accounts have presented, Riley's Op work occupies a key position in contemporary debates on the future of Western societies and of modernism in the arts. The constantly shifting focus that the spectator experiences in looking at Riley's Op paintings is a metaphor for the ambivalent utopian visions of the 1960s. Riley's work relates in subtle and unexpected ways to much of the other art of the period, from Happenings to Minimalism, to earlier work such as Pollock's and to later developments in postmodernism, and to areas of culture that might seem to have little to do with art at all, such as the 'space race' or the development of the 'hippy' movement.

Bound in folded printed softcovers. 53 b/w illustrations. Scarce.

Excellent condition: Unread copy, internally pristine. A touch of surface and edge wear to the covers from handling and storage.