Bridget Riley
Study for Praise, 1981, was one of a series of works conceived soon after Riley's travels in Egypt in the winter of 1979-80. During that trip Riley visited the Nile Valley and the museum at Cairo, studying at first hand, the ancient burial sites and temples of Egypt. Riley was enthralled by the consistency of palette used by the Egyptians to paint their gods, temples, to decorate their furniture, tone their motorized vehicles and adorn their jewellery and pottery. The brilliance of this palette of red, yellow, turquoise, green, black and white was further enhanced by the Mediterranean light and appealed deeply to the artist. On her return to London, Riley found that these colours continued to exercise a fascination. Any possibility of using them in her work was, however, tempered by the concern of appropriation. On recreating these colours, these `hang-ups' diminished, although she felt it was important to work from memory, rather than copying the 'Egyptian palette' (as coined by Riley) from reproductions in books.
While still limited in number, this range of `Egyptian' colours needed a formal vehicle that was simpler than the curve (which Riley had been using for the last six years). For this reason, Riley made the decision to revisit the colour stripe which she had used in her work since the mid-1970s. The stripe, a more neutral form, offered the longest edge and, hence, the optimum choice to align different colours `side-by-side' to achieve Riley's quest for optical resonance.
In Study for Praise, each of Riley's 'Egyptian' colours retains its individual brilliance and tonal value, whilst simultaneously interacting with the colours immediately adjacent to it, in order to generate an increased level of light. Furthermore, colour interactions can now take place right across the sheet. In Study for Praise, an elusive turquoise on one side of the sheet pulls out the echoing turquoise on the other and the presence of a single black line darkens and advances all colours in its vicinity.
