Elysium (Bridget Riley, 2003)

Riley is often associated with the Op Art movement of the mid-1960s, characterized by simple lines and forms, usually in repetitive patterns, that create illusion of movement. She arrived at Elysium’s optical effect by doing rigorous work in 1973 with exquisite small-scale maquettes to explore the interplay of red, blue, and green alternating with white. Personal circumstances forestalled for three decades her exact translation of these studies into the final large-scale painting, in which vertical stripes in a perfectly calibrated sequence emanate a rolling but controlled vibration of colored light. Elysium is a modern evocation of the paradise invoked by its title, an abstract interpretation of the pastoral.