"His failures are as valuable as his successes: by misjudging one thing he conforms something else, even if at the time he does not know what that something else is"
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Riley treats failure less like a bruise and more like a diagnostic tool: a way the work talks back. Coming from an artist whose practice is built on optical instability, the line quietly rejects the romantic myth of the painter as pure visionary. In Op Art, “success” isn’t a single finished image so much as a calibrated experience in the viewer’s body - shimmer, vibration, fatigue, afterimage. You don’t arrive there by inspiration alone; you arrive there by testing perception until it breaks, then reading the break.
The phrasing is telling. “Misjudging” frames error as measurement, not moral collapse. It implies a method: you make a call about color, interval, edge, rhythm; the result contradicts you; that contradiction contains information. “Conforms something else” (an interesting, slightly awkward verb choice) suggests that the mistake doesn’t just reveal a flaw - it consolidates a different truth. In a studio context, a botched canvas can clarify what the system is capable of, where it overloads the eye, where it goes dead, what kinds of tension the grid can actually hold.
The sting is in the last clause: “even if at the time he does not know what that something else is.” Riley is defending the delayed comprehension artists often live with, when the meaning of an experiment only becomes legible after repetition. It’s also a subtle rebuke to outcome-obsessed culture: creative labor is not a straight line of wins, but a chain of intelligent misreadings that gradually teach you what you’re really making.
The phrasing is telling. “Misjudging” frames error as measurement, not moral collapse. It implies a method: you make a call about color, interval, edge, rhythm; the result contradicts you; that contradiction contains information. “Conforms something else” (an interesting, slightly awkward verb choice) suggests that the mistake doesn’t just reveal a flaw - it consolidates a different truth. In a studio context, a botched canvas can clarify what the system is capable of, where it overloads the eye, where it goes dead, what kinds of tension the grid can actually hold.
The sting is in the last clause: “even if at the time he does not know what that something else is.” Riley is defending the delayed comprehension artists often live with, when the meaning of an experiment only becomes legible after repetition. It’s also a subtle rebuke to outcome-obsessed culture: creative labor is not a straight line of wins, but a chain of intelligent misreadings that gradually teach you what you’re really making.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning from Mistakes |
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