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I remember on several occasions, either when you came over for a studio visit, or when you were in attendance at an exhibition of mine, you told me, “I hate you,” which was your manner of delivering a compliment. I knew what you really meant was that you saw something recognizably good in the work, and that you found it to be particularly challenging.
Given my interest in painting, I found myself going to Milwaukee to see an exhibition that promised to be taking the pulse of contemporary American painting—all the works in it had been made in the last five years. A show of fifty paintings by fifty different painters who the curators claimed were defining the field of contemporary painting seemed a bold move, amidst the general confusion that has been generated by AI, market manipulation, auction house publicity, critical pronouncements, and a general cultural malaise that has lingered since the 1990s.
These works’ pictorial strategies, and others from the 1970s on, though their initial effects are still op, align them with many of the now marginalized practices of post-50s hardedge and geometric abstract art. With this insight, I realized Riley’s practice extends beyond her association with Op art and that her work can be contextualized within the broader aesthetic discourses of early and late modernism.
Milwaukee Art Museum will show 'Art, Life, Legacy: Northern European Paintings in the Collection of Isabel and Alfred Bader,' which opens Sept. 29, and '50 Paintings,' a survey of work by 50 contemporary painters, starting Nov. 17.
STEVE LAFRENIERE : In 1986 you were in the infamous neo-geo show at Sonnabend with Peter Halley, Meyer Vaisman, and Jeff Koons. It seemed as if the critics wanted to cast the four of you in total opposition to both neo-expressionism and the Pictures artists.ASHLEY BICKERTON: That was probably all that united us. We were cool—or cold—and we were against “them.” The angry young men rebelling, and like all rebellions it was about taking control.SL: Did the four of you have the idea of being shown together?AB: No. It didn’t even have to be the four of us, it just turned out that way. Tha...