Bridget Riley (b. 1931)
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's… Read more
Bridget Riley (b. 1931)

Buff

Details
Bridget Riley (b. 1931)
Buff
signed and dated 'Riley '03' (on the turnover edge); signed, titled, inscribed and dated 'BUFF. Riley 2003.' (on the stretcher and overlap)
oil on canvas
46 ¼ x 108in. (117.4 x 274.4cm.)
Painted in 2003
Provenance
Galerie Aurel Scheibler, Cologne.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2003.
Literature
R. Kudielka, A. Tommasini and N. Naish (eds.), Bridget Riley: The Complete Paintings, Volume 3, 1998-2009, London 2018, No. BR 411 (illustrated in colour, pp. 1078-1079).
Exhibited
Cologne, Galerie Aurel Scheibler, Bridget Riley: Bilder und Gouachen 1981-2004, 2004.
Special notice
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent. VAT rate of 20% is payable on hammer price and buyer's premium Where Christie’s has provided a Minimum Price Guarantee it is at risk of making a loss, which can be significant, if the lot fails to sell. Christie’s therefore sometimes chooses to share that risk with a third party. In such cases the third party agrees prior to the auction to place an irrevocable written bid on the lot. The third party is therefore committed to bidding on the lot and, even if there are no other bids, buying the lot at the level of the written bid unless there are any higher bids. In doing so, the third party takes on all or part of the risk of the lot not being sold. If the lot is not sold, the third party may incur a loss.
Sale room notice
Please note that this lot should be marked with a DAGGER symbol in the printed catalogue, and as such Import VAT is payable at 20% on the Hammer Price, in addition to the usual 20% VAT on the Buyer’s Premium.

Brought to you by

Katharine Arnold
Katharine Arnold

Lot Essay

‘When played through a series of arabesques the curve is wonderfully fluid, supple and strong. It can twist and bend, flow and sway, sometimes with the diagonal, sometimes against, so that the tempo is either accelerated or held back, delayed’
–Bridget Riley


With its undulating surface pattern stretching nearly three metres in width, Buff is a mesmerising large-scale work from Bridget Riley’s later series of curve paintings. In a vibrant five-toned palette of green, blue, pink, yellow and ‘buff’, the artist weaves a plane of intersecting arabesques, fractured by equally-spaced diagonal lines. Painted in 2003, the work demonstrates the complex pictorial structure that Riley adopted in 1997, and would explore on increasingly grand scales throughout the 2000s. These canvases developed the geometric principals of her earlier ‘Rhomboid’ paintings, which spliced vertical stripes into slanting ‘zigs’ or parallelograms. In the curve paintings, Riley introduced a new level of complexity by using a fluid shape as her base geometry. Though the artist had used curvilinear forms throughout her oeuvre, here they are marshalled by an underlying grid, thus creating a hypnotic push-and-pull between order and chaos. Riley was inspired by Jackson Pollock’s 1943 Mural, created for Peggy Guggenheim, which conjures a procession of human figures moving from left to right across the canvas. In the present work, the diagonals imbue the composition with sinuous, forward motion, shattering the arc of the curves like cresting waves, falling leaves or rippling sand dunes. For Riley, whose optical investigations are deeply tied to the rhythms of the natural world, these works represent some of her most entrancing. A monumental double canvas from the same year, Evoë 3, is held in the collection of Tate, London.

A major exponent of Op Art, with a practice stretching back to the 1960s, Riley is fascinated by the retinal and psychological effects of colour. By sequencing an ever- changing set of hues through a variety of geometric patterns, she seeks to explore their inherent physical energies, relishing the way in which their qualities change when juxtaposed with different chromatic values. Drawing inspiration from artists such as Georges Seurat, Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, the Italian Futurists and the Abstract Expressionists, Riley views colour as both a visual and an emotional phenomenon. By choosing forms that resonate with – though do not explicitly represent – nature, she seeks to shed light on the way we perceive the world. ‘The sensations [the curve paintings] generate belong to all of us’, she explains; ‘those sensations of shine and shimmer are amongst our most common visual experiences. By recognising that what I had brought about in a purely abstract context was something that, in ordinary life, we share, though mostly unconsciously, it therefore became valid’ (B. Riley, quoted in ‘Bridget Riley in Conversation with Lynne Cooke’, Bridget Riley, exh. cat., Musée d’Art moderne la Ville de Paris, Paris, 2008, p. 147). Riley’s reference to ‘shine’ and ‘shimmer’ offers an alternative interpretation of the present work’s title, which – as well as referring to a colour – invokes the act of polishing. Indeed, the colours appear to flicker and dance in sparkling formations, evoking the play of light upon a gleaming surface.

More from Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction

View All
View All