Fruitful oppositions

There are so many good exhibitions at the moment in the commercial sector that the dedicated gallery-goer can easily spend a day viewing top-quality work without paying a single museum admission fee. The following shows nicely complement some of the current or recent displays in public galleries — such as Mondrian||Nicholson at the Courtauld and the Tate’s Picasso and Modern British Art. Despite the financial squeeze and such new burdens as the bureaucratic nightmare of Artists’ Resale Right, commercial galleries continue to play an extremely important role in the nation’s artistic life, though they are not given much credit for it.

Typical of the museum-quality exhibitions now mounted with increasing frequency by the more resourceful gallerists is Bridget Riley: Works 1960–66. A joint venture between Riley’s long-time dealer Karsten Schubert and James Holland-Hibbert, this exceptional exhibition is split between two West End venues, so be sure not to miss one or the other. Riley, who celebrated her 80th birthday last year and continues to work with unceasing invention and unabated rigour, first came to prominence in the 1960s with her extraordinary black-and-white optical paintings. This is the first exhibition to concentrate exclusively on the b&w works, and brings together paintings from public and private collections, previously unseen gouache studies from the artist’s studio, and the complete prints, making some 46 items in all. Some images will be more familiar than others, but it’s fascinating to see such unknown works as the circle and square gouaches from 1960 alongside classic Op Art paintings like ‘Climax’ and ‘Crest’.

Although initially these paintings were entirely restricted to black and white emulsion paint, the geometrical arrangements of their patterns exert such strange and powerful effects on the eyes that we start to see not only movement but also colour.