Critic Clement Greenberg believed that flatness, or two-dimensional, was an essential and desirable quality in painting, a criterion which implies rejection of painterliness and impasto.
The valorization of flatness led to a number of art movements, including minimalism and post-painterly abstractionism.
The groundwork idea for Minimalism began in Russia in 1913 when Kazimir Malevich placed a black square on a white background claiming that: Art no longer cares to serve the state and religion it no longer wishes to illustrate the history of manners, it wants to have nothing further to do with the object as such, and believes that it can exist in and for itself without things.
This new expressionist style consisted of improvised pattern making where every stroke of the brush was viewed as expression and subjective freedom.
The works now in question held a meaning for the viewer with familiar imagery but it still retained the avant-garde approach of Minimalism.
The designs presented migrated back to the Minimalist idea of art simply existing and not representing an ideal.
[8] Riley composes her art with the thought in mind that we all have a narrow view on how we see things and our vision is rarely stretched to new abilities.
Her work confronts the observer with new imaginative sensations, and the overall purpose of the artist's disappears and is replaced with what the viewer conceives.
Riley's work ignores object and instead focuses on visual movement to create a seemingly endless pattern.