Thursday, June 09, 2005

pictures that make your eyes water

At the weekend the boy and I went to have a look at the Bridget Riley exhibition. She specialises in what's known at Op Art i.e. paintings that make your eyes go all funny if you look at them for too long.

Some of them I liked, in that they were real optical illusions (kinda like Escher only not representational, and, in my opinion, not nearly as clever). Others just looked like candy-striped bed linen to me.

I'll tell you this though. In her youth (that would be the 1960's), she sure did look like a cool chick in her capris.

After about half an hour of looking at wavy lines that seemed to move in three dimensions, I was quite glad I didn't have to drive us home.

6 comments:

Amanda said...

I was wondering about whether to go to that the other day...but we went to the Te Papa one with drawings from the Queens collection instead- which we really enjoyed.

Watson Woodworth said...

I've seen some of the black and white set on posters and t shirts.
I liked the use of color and ... I guess 'bendyness' in the other set.

Violet said...

mtnw: We saw that too, but it was mighty crowded on the day we went. There's a special ticket price if you plan to see both, you know.

nigel: it's almost psychedelic isn't it? Which is appropriate for the Sixties.

Kazzer said...

Your paintings are much better than hers. I couldn't see a single Laughing Cow in any of hers.

Violet said...

kazzer: if you look long enough without blinking you can't see much at all, really.

glomgold said...

Those pics were making me dizzy even from the computer screen.