Mayor Rowan Gallery, London
Pace Wildenstein, London
Robert Sandelson, London
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2003

London, Tate Britain, Bridget Riley, 2003, p. 167, no. 44, illustrated in colour
Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art; Wellington, City Gallery Wellington; Aarau, Aagauer Kunsthaus, Bridget Riley: Paintings 1961-2004, 2004-5, p. 161, no. 35,  illustrated in colour
Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Bridget Riley, Rétrospective, 2008, p. 257, no. 39, illustrated in colour
Goslar, Monchehaus Museum Goslar, Bridget Riley: Goslar Kaiser Ring, 2009
Berlin, Galerie Max Hetzler, Bridget Riley – Paintings and Related Works 1983-2010

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly brighter and more vibrant in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is a tiny pin-sized spot of paint loss to the overturn tip of the bottom right corner. Examination under ultraviolet light reveals a small spot of retouching to the bottom of the right edge.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

"Right up to, and in some ways including, the stripe paintings I used to build up to sensation, accumulating tension until it released a perceptual experience that flooded the whole as it were. Now I try to take sensation as the guiding line and build, with the relationships it demands, a plastic fabric which has no other raison d'être except to accommodate the sensation it solicits" (the artist in: Paul Moorhouse, 'A Dialogue with Sensation: The Art of Bridget Riley', Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Britain, Bridget Riley, 2003, p. 22)

 

Bridget Riley's exuberant Tabriz is a masterpiece of pure chromatic sensation. Executed in 1984, and belonging to the cycle of 'Egyptian Palette' paintings produced in the aftermath of Riley's profoundly influential travels in the winter of 1979-1980, Tabriz stands as among the most optically arresting and jubilant of this important series. Striated in vertiginous bands of seeming endless variegation, Riley's masterful command of colour, line and composition belies the formal restriction to only six individual hues articulated within a constancy of stripe width. Indeed, while the linear pattern of Tabriz fundamentally stabilises and structures the picture plane, the chromatic reaction of one colourꦫ ju🍰xtaposed against another in immediate arbitrary succession, incites an optical illusion which distorts the width of line and tone of pigment to engender a wavering and rhythmic chromatic pulsation. Herein, we are presented not only with the paradox that is inherent to all of Riley's most accomplished works – how can such seemingly simple pictorial means generate such magisterial and diverse effects – but also with a more intangible atmospheric quality that stimulates an intensified visual perception. Named after the historical Iranian city of Tabriz famous for its production of textiles, this is an intensely evocative painting rooted in memory, and suffuse with sheer kaleidoscopic sensorial affect.

 

During the winter of 1979-1980 Riley travelled to Egypt, here she studied first hand the tombs of the Pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings. Immediately struck with the art found in the ancient crypts, the evocation of light and life exuberantly articulated with a surprisingly limited number of chromatic hues had a profoundly lasting affect: restricted to red, blue, yellow, turquoise, green, black and white Riley recognised the constancy of these colours and their application in all aspects of life in Ancient Egypt. Upon her return, these colours continued to exercise a fascination and directly invoked a fundamental transformation in Riley's work. Invoking the sensorial memory of her travels, the paintings produced between 1980 and 1985 exhibit Riley's free reconstruction of the restricted yet intensely vibrant and bold chromatic palette found in Egypt. In the pursuit of a pure and primary visual experience, maximum chromatic luminosity and effect demanded a return to a heightened graphic simplicity that recalled Riley's black and white striped compositions from the early 1970s. As masterfully exhibited in Tabriz, the ostensibly arbitrary dissemination of only six hues across ninety-six vertical stripes confers a tonal interaction that transgresses the linear boundaries to confers an intense harmonic resonance.  As outlined by Paul Moorhouse, "previously, the viewer's optical interaction with a painting led inexorably to an 'event' in the form of an apparent movement or light. Now this performance by the work has been replaced by a situation in which the viewer and the painting are in a balanced dialogue" (Paul Moorhouse, 'A Dialogue with Sensation: The Art of Bridget Riley', Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Britain, Bridget Riley, 2003, p. 24).

 

Encountered at a typical viewing distance the scale of Tabriz engulfs our field of vision while the immaculate and measured distribution of vertical strips provides a deeply satisfying sense of geometric order. We are immersed in the nuanced and undulating colour juxtapositions that mediate chromatic passages of differing intensities: "from density and weight to dullness and brilliance and tranquillity; from closed impenetrability to open airy space, from advancing planes to shallow recessions" (Ibid., p. 22). One detects echoes, repetitions and inversions; however, any search for cogent patternation is utterly thwarted. Rather, our sight and cognition are disarmed and abandoned for sheer immersive splendour. The eye is unable to settle, our vision is constantly moving to traverse the linear geometry of Riley's composition; an instable viewing experience that mirrors our optical cognition of nature's physical arena. Riley described this complex methodology and its visual allusion to the natural world the very same year Tabriz was painted: "I do not select single colours but rather pairs, triads or groups of colour which taken together act as generators of what can be seen through or via the painting. By which I mean that the colours are organised on the canvas so that the eye can travel over the surface in a way parallel to the way it moves over nature. It should feel caressed and soothed, experience frictions and ruptures, glide and drift. Vision can be arrested, tripped up or pulled back in order to float free again" (Bridget Riley, 'The Pleasures of Sight {1984}', Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Britain, Bridget Riley, 2003, p. 213).

 

Tabriz summates over thirty years of Bridget Riley's dedicated engagement in the possibilities of colour. In the 1950s she made studies from the Pointillism of Georges Seurat, who was influenced by the empiricism of Charles Henry and his theory that mathematical formulation could directly explain aesthetic results. Riley was also fascinated with the manipulation of colour by Abstract Expressionists, in particular Jackson Pollock whose work she visited both at Tate's Modern Art in the United States in 1956 and at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1958. Although her precise and graphic visual dialect is somewhat opposed to Pollock's improvised Action Painting, she was attracted to the multi-focal surfaces of his paintings which so revolutionised the single-focus perspective of the European tradition. Her interest in 'Virtual Movement' was, of course, also indebted to the rhythmic visual language of the Italian Futurists that she had seen at the XXX Venice Biennale in 1960. Moreover, with the onset of the1980s and Riley's return to an evocation of her remote beginnings, the works produced during these years incited a dialogue with the French painters of Classical Modernism, pursuing a sustained analysis of Renoir's colourism in the spring of 1985. Indeed, as outlined by Robert Kudielka, "One can see that the 'stripe' paintings of 1980-85 hold a unique position in Riley's works in the sense that they mark the apex of her transition from the earlier, chromatic use of colour to the spatial and 'plastic' emphasis of the most recent paintings. Indeed, at moments she comes close to realising a dream of every colourist – to make the spectator oblivious of form" (Robert Kudielka, ' The Paintings of the Years 1982-1992', Exhibition Catalogue, London, Hayward Gallery, Bridget Riley, 1992, p. 42).