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. One moment, there will be nothing to look at and the next second the canvas seems to refill, to be crowded with visual events.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the dynamic experience of viewing art, likening it to the way we observe and interact with nature.
Bridget Riley's quote highlights the intricate relationship between visual perception and artistic experience. Just as our eyes move over the diverse and ever-changing surfaces of nature, they should navigate through art with the same fluidity and sensitivity. Art should evoke sensations, transitioning between moments of emptiness and bursts of visual stimuli, mirroring the unpredictability and richness of the natural world.
In practice
In an art critique session to highlight the fluidity of perception.
A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colourful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots can't stay alone; like the communicative life of people, two or three polka-dots become movement... Polka-dots are a way to infinity.
The novelist does not long to see the_x000D_ lion eat grass. He realizes that one and_x000D_ the same God created the wolf and the_x000D_ lamb, then smiled, “seeing that his_x000D_ work was good.”
You get older and come to the conclusion that it's a great gig making music. Even if you turn into an old gnarly fart, no one cares what you look like if you write good songs - the only gig is to sing well and perform.
When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy.
All intervening steps, scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed work models, studies thoughts, conversations, are of interest. Those that show the thought process of the artist are sometimes more interesting than the final product
You can't expect someone born into a family with no music... to understand when I'm conducting the Schoenberg Variations.
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