Op-Art

Vasarely, Voonal SSZ, 1968

Not long ago, we talked about optical illusions and we mentioned Op-Art. We’ll deepen a little bit:

Moholy-Nagy, Architecture I

It’s a movement born in the 60’s; the name comes from Optical Art and its fame arrived after a note in Time magazine about a 1964-65 exhibition in the MoMA (The responsive eye), in which more than 99 artists from more than 15 countries took part. They find inspiration in the geometric abstraction developed by Moholy Nagy, Malevich, Mondrian… they react against the so trendy in USA abstract expressionism, which was an expression of action painting. It was absolute and essential against individuality and spontaneity. 

Le Parc, Untitled, 1970

But, what’s more, they wanted to express movement with those geometric shapes. (That’s why it’s also called “Kinetic art”). And we know this is a chimera, impossible: a painting is plane, two-dimensional, still… and all that can be tried are optical illusions. To sculptors this was easier: think about Calder’s mobile or Kosice’s water structures! The sculptures move in reality, but how to achieve that in painting?

Balla, Dog's dynamism with leash, 1912

This was not new: Italian futurists had already attempted it, just like Balla, Severini or Boccioni; who showed movement with figure repetition. But this was not enough, there was something lacking still. It was long known already that some colors together vibrate, but, after Joseph Albers’ research at Bauhaus about color interaction, this knowledge turned out to be more scientific.

They started to play with colors, shapes and valeurs: confronting complementary colors, applying them to different shapes, which would be shortened, widened, repeated… they would contrast curves and lines, circles and rectangles… They would experiment with super-positioning and transparencies; this led them to look for transparent materials as support: acrylic sheets and methacrylate… This is how a virtual movement is achievement, an optical illusion that deceives our brain (as always). The basis is always geometrical, but the effect is based in color theory.

Anuszkiewicz, Dual red, 1979

The outcome is that you, as view, experiment that lines and shape move. And if you move, the painting will accompany your movement. It’s the first time that the painter implicates the viewer with their participation: the painting calls you, attracts you and you just do not contemplate it in front of it. Action and contemplation are the same: it’s a new way of admiring art. In this we find the seed of what later will be called happenings, performances…

Sempere, Rotating virtual
movement, 1969

Most emblematic artists in this group are undoubtedly Victor Vasarely and Bridget Riley. Vasarely, for example, uses algorithms to compose his works and is the first one to use computers for it. We can also mention Richard Anuszkiewicz, Yacoov Agam, Eusebio Sempere, Julio Le Parc, Matilde Pérez, Jesús Rafael Soto, as many others.

Some of these artists created works for urban spaces. Op-Art invaded the 70’ vinyl’s covers and was present in catwalks for Ungaro and Courrèges.

Riley, Movement in squares, 1961

Sources: Doss, E. Twentieth-Century American Art. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002

Hopkins, D. After Modern Art 1945-2000, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000

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