Embodied Visions : The Op Art Work of Bridget Riley, 1961-1965

Bridget Riley is one of the world's leading abstract painters with a career spanning five decades.

Her work, which has been extensively exhibited internationally throughout her career, is both consistent and highly varied.

She first attracted critical attention with the dazzling black and white paintings that she started making in 1961.

Her participation in the seminal exhibition The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1965 helped establish her as a leading artist.

Frances Follin's book Embodied Visions explores the beginning of Bridget Riley's career as an abstract painter, and studies the iconic status of her black and white paintings of the 1960s.

Follin asks the question 'What do we see when we look at these paintings, and, more to the point what did people see when they looked at these paintings in the early 1960s; they were and remain icons of the period.

Why should this be?' The book looks at her early exhibitions and examines the work's meanings and associations and their relationship to the art and culture of the period.

Follin explores society and popular culture through Riley's paintings.