Eye Candy, Mind Games

It's not easy being associated forever with a single moment in time. Consider Bridget Riley. When the British artist's mind-bending black-and-white paintings were exhibited in New York in 1965, the fashion world seized on her style and sprayed deformed checkerboard patterns all over ties, dresses and lamp shades. It was hip to be Op, as Riley's approach was called, but she complained her work had been "vulgarized in the rag trade." Another artist might have abandoned the style, but Riley never veered from her path and soon transcended the merely trendy. Today, at 72, she is one of the U.K.'s most...