The Art of Deception

The Theory of OP ART

OP Art Exhibition 2017 Los Angeles Convention Center

FOCUSING

ISN’T JUST AN

ACTIVITY,

OPTICAL

IT IS ALSO A

MENTAL

ONE

TABLE OF CONTENTS 8 32 54 66 84 100 116 130 136

HISTORY OF OP ART VICTOR VASARELY PETER SEDGLEY JESUS RAFAEL SOTO CARLOS CRUZ DIEZ BRIDGET RILEY JEFFREY STEELE EXHIBITION HISTORIES LIST OF WORKS

1—Anon., “Op Art: ‘Pictures that Attack the Eye’”, in Time, October 23, 1964, pp.42-44.

2—”Practising Abstraction: Bridget Riley Talking to Michael Craig-Martin,” in Bridget Riley, Selected Paintings, 1961-1999, exh.cat. Kunsterverein fur die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Dusseldorf 1999/2000, p.70/71.

HISTORY OF OP ART

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Everything began. if you will, with an “attack on the eye”; that. at least, is suggested by the title of an unsigned article in Time magazine in 1964 on a series of artists and their works he labeled with the catchy name Op Art, by analogy to the Pop Art of the period.1 That, however, was merely the birth of the label. The movement itself, in its variety and heterogeneity as a whole. cannot be simply categorized historically or with respect to its specific phenomena—a simple truth that also applies to any other complex aesthetic issue. The triumphant progress of the term. which was as plausible as it was at times fiercely contested. was almost as powerful and in precisely this dichotomy certainly comparable to the success of the artists and their works.

Only in retrospect has the dawn of something new come to look like the most striking characteristic of a time that was searching for technological and above all social change; as Bridget Riley recalls: “In the sixties people right across the board embraced the idea of the new with enthusiasm.” which is reflected not least in an art that also pushed for innovation. Riley goes on: “In the arts this spirit took a radical form inconceivable now.“ 2 The texts of the period-for example, an exhibition catalog by a group at some of the central protagonists of Op Art. the Pans- based Groupe de Recherche d‘Art Visuel. or GRAV for short-read almost like a war of the worlds: “After Schoeffer held up. almost single-handedly. the banner of Moholy-Nagy’s achievements at the Bauhaus after 1945 against the

By: Martina Weinhart

OP ART

Ecole de Paris and a genuine flood of Art lnlormel and Tachism, the Groupe de Recherche truly brought to a close the dominance of the Ecole.”3 The expressive gestures of the traditional artist were under attack: “Younger artists wanted precision.” as Cyril Barrett wrote.4 At the second Biennale de Paris in 1961 GRAV drew up a pamphlet with the combative title “Assez des mystifications!” [Enough mystifications!]. In it the group reproached the organizers of the Biennale de Paris for not having reflected sufficiently on what contemporary art should achieve. They rebuked “the inconsistency and ignorance of the exhibitors and organizers regarding the true character of the life that humanity has entered in our lifetimes.”5 Their goal, by contrast, was to achieve exactly that and thereby to liberate the visual arts from conventions. Francois Morellet, a member of GRAV, argued distinctly along those lines: “Art history is no longer anything but an inventory of objects with information about their producers; on the other hand, artistic education is nothing but a course in production.”6 And so young artists of the period were building a new tendency on a foundation that had already been established by the avant-gardes of the beginning of that century. The traditional work suddenly seemed old-fashioned and made room for the “open work.”

Not coincidentally, Umberto Eco. who coined that phrase. wrote one of the key texts of arte programmata, as Op Art is known in Italy.7 Correspondingly, even the classical techniques took on the haut gou‘t 3—Eugen Thiemann, in Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel, exh. cat. Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund 1968, p.4.

4—Cyril Barrett, Op Art, (New York: Viking 1970), p.61.

5—”Assez de mystifications!”, Manifest on the occasion of the second Biennale de Paris. September 1961, Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (note 3), p.6.

6—Francois Morellet, in Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (note 3), p.41.

7—See Umberto Eco, “Arte programmata: Arte cinetica, opera multiplicate, opera aperta,” in ech.cat. Olivetti, Milan 1962.

Marcel Duschamp, Rotoreliefs, 1935

of the no-longer-contemporary, of being unable to illustrate the dynamics of the new reality of life. Hence Eco called for his readers to admire kinetic sculpture, which people of the future would install in their homesI instead of old prints or reproductions of old masters.

His open work, as represented by arte programmata, is not a fixed object but instead functions like a proposal to the viewer in the sense that within the boundaries of this civilization, as Eco writes, aesthetic pleasure does not grow out of the vision of a complete or finished object any longer but is continually attempting the adventure of change. Critics of the future, he wrote, would appreciate it and consider it appropriate for that twentieth-century human being to enjoy looking at the variety of coexisting, simultaneous forms. At the same time, Eco describes the advantages of the “perceptual gymnastics” that are necessary, which are said to correspond in turn to the splintering of gazes that are demanded of modern people by the speeding up of their everyday lives, like car drivers, whom Eco mentions as an example, who have to be able to follow several forms

OP ART

9

in motion simultaneously. They focus their gaze on the median strip of the road, look in the side and rear mirrors, coordinate the various perspectival axes, bring them together, and all the while they enjoy the passing view through the window.

Meeting this challenge of creating an art that could do justice to the dynamic spirit of the time with a new ver- sion of several simultaneous forms in constant alternation was confronted by a whole series of young artists. This called for a new art in the name of objectivity.

Piet Mondrian, Victory Boogie Woogie, 1944

10

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Light-Space Modulator, 1922-30

OP ART

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

The enthusiastically welcomed new aspects of Op Art were, of course, not all that new, and their roots in modernism were numerous. It reads like an echo of the early-twentieth-century avant-garde‘s enthusiasm for technology when another member of GRAV—Yvaral. a pseudonym of Victor Vasarely‘s son, Jean-Pierre—wrote: “London at night, seen from an airplane, the fantastic carousel of neon lights at Times Square, the fireworks of Bastille Day, the lights of cars on the road. the flickering ballet of light reflected in water, the nocturnal magic of an refinery....” 8 The relationship to the optically provocative light suggestions of the Neo-lmpressionists, who contributed to modernity the dissolution of the object’s color, and to Paul Cezanne, who studied the laws of optics was evoked bt these artists along with that to Georges Seurat, with whom the young Bridget Riley attempted to come tot terms. Op Art wandered on the paths of De Stijl, with Theo van Doesburg’s thesis of concrete painting, and naturally Op Art owed something to the Bauhaus and its representatives, above all Josef Albers, who not only inspired the movement with his black-and-whet spatial perspectives and color field combinations but also provided the guidelines for an entire generation of artists with is studies of the inherent laws of color. There was also his prominent role as teacher, with Richard Anuskiewicz, one of the most important proponents of American Op Art, numbering among his students.

8—Yvaral, in Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (note 3), p.78

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The early avant-garde of the twentieth century, with its serial techniques of repeating identical units, contributed, on the one hand, to the interest in the formalist experiment with construction, which in turn related to the aspect of movement about which the protagonists of Op Art were so enthusiastic. The Paris-based Venezuelan artist Jesu’s Rafael Soto wrote: “Mondrian’s last works—The Victory Boogie-Woogie—those lights!

There one sees the beginning of vibration in painting...

It seemed to me that he had made a sudden leap in the direction of purely dynamic painting realized through optical means…that he was about to make the image move optically.” 9 The aspect of movement referred back to early abstract films like Viking Eggeling’s Diagonal Symphony (1923-24), Hans Richter‘s Rhythm 23 (1923), or Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s Light-Space Modulator (1922-30)—a kinetic experiment consisting of several spotlights that created numerous metamorphosing shadows on the wall as it rotated around its axis. And it is in this context that A Film in Black, White, and Gray (1930) was produced. Hence the basic patterns of Op Art were already established. Another no less essential building block is found, as so often, in the work of Marcel Duchamp, who in widely different works contributed to the analysis of perception, above all that of seeing in motion. His Rotating Glass Disks, his Rotating Semicircle, and his Rotoreliefs (1935) are frequently mentioned. All too often forgotten, however, is To Be Looked at (from the Other Side of the Glass) with One

Eye, Close to, for Almost an Hour (1918)—a somewhat less spectacular prototype to the Large Glass. Not only did Duchamp use circular structures here that he took from optician‘s tables but the work also contains a small magnifying glass. Elemental in many respects. however. is the instruction given by the title. as it is nothing other than a set of instructions for seeing. and hence it places the act of perception. and above all the viewers themselves. at the locus of the work of art and thus already lays Out two elementary aspects of Op Art.

9—Quoted in Barrett, Op Art (note 4), p.74.

Viking Eggeling, Diagonal Symphony, 1923-24

OP ART

LE MOUVEMENT

Over the course of the 19405, as Cyril Barrett writes in an early compendium on the movement, a number of isolated first steps toward Op Art emerged: “By the 19403 there had thus been a number of isolated instances of Optical art, but nothing that could be described as a movement.”10 It can, however, be asserted with some certainty that the exhibition Le Mouvement, in the Galerie Denise Rene in Paris in April 1955, which assembled works by Yaacov Agam, Pol Bury, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp, Egill Jacobsen, Jesus Rafael Soto, Jean Tinguely, and Victor Vasarely, was particularly important for the development of Op Art. It was the first collective exhibition of the growing numbers of works since the early 1950s that explored the possibilities for integrating motion into the artwork in order to do justice to, as Pontus Hulten wrote in the accompanying brochure. one of the outstanding innovations of the twentieth century—the time factor, the fourth dimension.11 At the same time. the exhibition represented an opportunity for Victor Vasarely—for many the “father of Op Art”—to publish a manifesto that is now known as the Yellow Manifesto and is dedicated to the theme of “plastic kineticism,” in which he emphatically parted with the two-dimensional, static painting in the name of the challenges presented by the new era.12 Following this “breakthrough,” various centers of Op Art seemed to take shape throughout Europe, and 10 —Barrett, Op Art (note 4), p. 74.

11 —Pontus Hulten, “Time-Motion; or, The Four Dimensions of Kinetic Plastics,” in the brochure for the exhibition Le mouvement, Galerie Denise Rene, Paris 1955, unpaginated.

12 —Victor Vasarely, “Notes pour un manifeste,” in ibid., unpaginated.

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nearly everywhere artists were forming groups. There was GRAV in Paris, which formed in July 1960 under the name CRAV (Centre de Recherche d‘Art Visuel), emerging from the ‘motus’ group and soon changed its name to Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel; its founding document was signed by Demarco, Garcia-Miranda, Garcia Rossi‘ Le Parc, Molnar. Morellet, Moyano, Servanesi Sobrino, Stein, and Yvaral. A year earlier Alberto Biasli Ennio Chiggio, Toni Costa, Edoardo Landi, and Manfredo Massironi founded the Gruppo N in Padua; in addition to optical problems, this group of artists, who exhibited anonymously, were concerned with literature industrial design, architecture, and musique concréte. Not far away, in Milan, worked the Gruppo T, also founded in 1959, including Giovanni Anceschi, Davide Boriani, Gianni Colombo, Grazia Varisco, and Gabriele De Vecchi; the T stands for tempo, i.e. time.

The Gruppo MID (Movimento lmmagine Dimensione, 1964—66) was also based in Milan. Equipo 57 was formed in Paris in 1957 by Jose Duarte, Angel Duarte, Agustin lbarrola, and Juan Serrano; less central were

The Responsive Eye, Museum of Modern Art, New York 13—On this, see Valerie L. Hillings, “Die Georgrafie der Zusammenarbeit: Zero, Nouvelle Tendance und das Gruppenphanomen der Nachkriegszeit,” in Zero: Internationale Kunstler Avantgarde der 50er/60er Jahre, exh.cat. museum kunst palast Dusseldorf, 2006, pp.76-85.

14—Tobias Hoffmann, “Einfuhrung,” in Die Neuen Tendenzen: Eine europaische Kunstlerbewegung, 1961-1973, exh.cat. Museum fur Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt, 2006, p.15.

15—The City Art Museum of Saint Louis, The Contemporary Art Council of the Seattle Art Museum, The Pasadena Art Museum, and The Baltimore Art Museum.

The Responsive Eye, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Dvizheniye [Movement] in Moscow (1966-77) and of course there was ZERO in Germany, with Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, and Gunther Uecker, to name only the most important groups. In some cases they maintained very close connections that were based on a shared interest in non-subjective art; frequently too the contacts resulted from joint participation in the many group exhibitions that were held.13 Op Art thus became one of the few artistic movements with truly global spread in widely different political and cultural contexts. Op Art is, after all, art that can be understood without previous knowledge and that can guarantee the spontaneous experience of the work.

An exhibition series launched in 1961 under the title Nove tendencije [New Tendencies] played a central role in the dynamics of the Op Art movement. This exhibition in Zagreb, curated by Almir Mavignier with the slogan “From the painting to the object,” the artist-curator succeeded for the first time in bringing together the full spectrum of these artists and groups who were working independently of one another. At the very first

OP ART

exhibition the artists who had come together from all over were inspired to found the artists’ group Nouvelle Tendance. There and over the course of the exhibitions that followed—1963, 1965, and 1968-69 in Zagreb, with venues in the Fondazione Ouerini Stampaglia in Venice in 1963. Sta”dtisches Museum Leverkusen Schloss Morsbroich, and the Pavillon du Marsan at the Muse’e du Louvre in Paris in 1964—united “nearly all of the Euro pean artists and artists’ groups of the 19603 who were concerned with art based on structure and grids, light art, kinetic art. and Op Art.”14 In the mid-1960s, Op Art established itself in a genuine march of triumph through Europe and America. The height of the Op Art wave was an exhibition organized

by William C. Seitz: The Responsive Eye, at the veritable “center of modernism,” the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which was followed by exhibitions in Saint Louis, Seattle, Pasadena, and Baltimore15 —that is to say through half of the United States—but was also flanked in New York by a whole series of gallery exhibitions.16 Both the exhibition and the movement itself divided critics al the time. The more conservative among them such as Barbara Rose spoke of an “optical hysteria.”17 And indeed this culmination seems to have brought something to a close as well: “As if beginning in the mid-1960s, with the extensive Op Art and (light) kinetics exhibitions, some of which were presented by museums, the avant-garde had found a popular basis and united it not just superficially, since the artistic 16—Abstract Trompe l’OEil: Five Painters Who Lead and Mislead the Eye, Sidney Janis Gallery with Albers, Anuskiewicz, Auguste Herbin, Larry Poons, and Vasarely; Vibrations Eleven, Martha Jackson Gallery; Color Dynamics Then and Now, East Hampton Gallery; and Impact, Greer Gallery.

17—Barbara Rose, “Beyond Vertigo: Optical Art at the Modern,” in Artforum (April 1965).

18—Annette Kuhn, “Zero im Kontext der europaischen Avantgarde,” in Zero: Eine Europaische Avantgarde, Galerie Neher, Essen 1992, p.2.

The Responsive Eye, Museum of Modern Art, New York

debates of earlier years had led to differentiation and separation.”18 By the time documenta 4 gave a broad platform to Op Art in 1968, the movement was nearly history. In 1965 the Gruppo N in Padua broke up, after shrinking from its initial eleven members tojust five. On November 15. 1968, GRAV announced it was dissolving in a bulletin titled Acte de dissolution, in which its signers—Horacio Garcia Rossi, Julio Le Parc, Francois Morellet, Francisco Sobrino, Joel Stein, and Yvaral— declared they had now gone their own ways in their work. Frank Popper summarized the situa- tion for the kinetic art branch as follows: “After the Kinetics exhibition in London in 1970 it was clear that the broad- er public was tiring of kinetic art. Leading theorists like Jack Burnham characterized it as “unrequited art,” and most artists abandoned group work for material or ideological reasons in favor of rigorously pursuing their individual careers. Despite this loss of interest in kinetic art, in the period that followed it continued to develop in the context of two perspectives-the environment and audience participation—and produced

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essential results.”19 The tremendous tempo at which Op Art had Virtually become a brand name20 -something the artists resisted, and were able to resist, only to a limited degree—also played its part. Moreover, the original complexity quickly gave way as a result of an enormously rapid popularization, massive distribution of graphic works in large print runs, and its use as fashionable decoration for tiles, fabrics, and porcelain objects. The unbelievable success of a star like Victor Vasarely—who was both a forerunner of the movement and one of its main protagonists—went hand in hand with an inflationary use of its forms, content, and ideas that nearly led to an equally fast end to Op Art. Werner Spies wrote of Vasarely in retrospect: “Today, surely no one can imagine the fame, the overwhelming effect, and the omnipotent presence of this powerful speaker and distinguished artist. In his large atelier in Annet-sur-Marne, which is organized like a laboratory, illustrious visitors turned the door handle. In his studio there was talk of research and prototypes; there were stimulating discussions to which mathematicians, physicists, politicians, and behavioral scientists contributed more than did the exegetes of art.” 21

19—Frank Popper, Die Kinetische Kunst: Licht und Bewegung, Umwelktkunst und Aktion, Cologne: M. DuMont Schauberg 1975, p.90.

20—”Op works now sell for up to $12,000,” rejoiced Life magazine; see Warren R. Young, “Op Art,” Life International (December 1964).

21—Werner Spies, “Das Auge sieht sich selbst beim Sehen zu,” in idem, Kunstgeschichten: Von Bildern und Kunstlern im 20. Jahrhundert, vol. 2, Cologne: DuMont 1998, pp. 122-25, esp. p.123.

Gruppo N with Strutturazione dinamica, 1964 – Alberto Biasi and Manfredo Massironi

Gruppo MID, 1966: Von links: Alberto Marangoni, Gianfranco Laminarca, Anfonso Grassi, and Antonio Barrese

OP ART

WHAT IS OP?

Gwen the breadth of the movement there has been no lack to define and peel it down to a clear core in which the largest common denominator is surely an art of perception that is based on the deliberate confusion of vision. indicating that the most important feature of Optical Art lies in its effect on certain physiological processes of the eye and brain of which we are not normally conscious, neither in everyday seeing nor in observing different artworks.22 Max lmdahl took a similar view when he wrote: “What proved to be far mare crucial, however. was the provocation of the eye as a mere sense organ, the extreme activation of vision in the sense of a physiological event, and specifically under the determined exploration of the degree of complexity to which the experience of vision could be pushed, and what kind of otherwise invisible energy is revealed through the senses to an eye provoked in this way.” 23 In addition to the irritation and provocation of the eye, there was another central motif that was inherent in the structure in that process: the eye‘s constant, futile attempt to grasp states, to fix them, to make distinctions between specific findings of phases, which makes movement itself a central theme. Some arguments suggest the aspect of motion in Op Art and kinetic art should be summarized as different sides of the same coin. The argument that kinetic art and Op Art should be seen together centers on the observation that both revolve around art that cannot be fixed. Even for Vasarely that is by no means a contradiction; he called his paintings 22—Barrett, Op Art (note 4), p.10.

23—Max lmdahl, “Probleme der Optical Art: Delaunay, Mondrian, Vasarely” (1966) , in idem, Reflexion, Theorie, Methode, vol. 3 of Gottfried Boehm (ed.), Gesammelte Schriften, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1996, p.204.

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“planar kinetic works.” Only when different media are viewed together does the spatial concept emerge of a kind of painting that reaches for ambiance and only exists in the space between the painting and the viewer.

Op Art and kinetic art unite mechanical with virtual motion and are not so focused on the existence of form or material per se. Different layers overlap in the process: the actual mechanical movement, the optical movement when the observer’s position changes, the appearance of movement caused by perceptual effects like flickering between lines, and finally the perceptual movement resulting from the appearance of inversions in the image. Frequently several points of view are combined in one work, especially in case of the sweeping effects of ambienti or environments. That was not the only reason of the centrality of such works, whether one is speaking of the labyrinths of GRAV, with their comprehensive effects on the viewer; the color rooms of Carlos Cruz-Diez; Gianni Colombo’s dark rooms; or Christian Megert’s mirror rooms, with their disorienting effects on the entire body. They also make the transitions between these areas fluid. The hybridity of the form of motion is often already inherent in the material character of the three-dimensional visual object, as is the case with Jesus Rafael Soto’s Vibration Structures, whose dense plexus seems to dissolve as one moves past only to come together again in new structures, or the spacious installations by Julio Le Parc, which are always marked by the double movement of the viewer’s 24—Josef Albers, “Texte,• in Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (eds.), Kunsttheor ie im 20. Jahrhund ert: Kunstlerschr iften, Kunstkri tik, Kunstph ilosoph ie, Manifes te, Statements, Interviews, vol. 2, 1940-91, Ost fildern : Hatje Cantz 1998, pp. 921/22.

25—Michael Compton, Opt ical and Kinetic Art, exh. cat. Tate Gallery, London 1967, unpaginated.

26—Jean Clay, “Painting: A Thing of the Past;’ Stud io: Internation al Journal of Modern Art, July/August 1967, p.12.

Carlos Cruz Diez, Cromosaturación, 1965-2106

changing position. Josef Albers, the great forerunner of Op Art, formulated this transitory “in between” into a dichotomy that is conceived above all as effect when he wrote: “The origin of art: the contradiction between physical facts and psychological effect. … The goal of art: revealing and awakening vision“24 It is certainly the case that these were parallel attempts to “annihilate the traditional static concept of space and the traditional methods of picture construction,” as Michael Compton has written.25 In that sense one could apply equally to Op Art what Jean Clay observed of kinetic art when he described it as “the awareness of the instability of reality” 26 —an aspect that emerges in different ways in the variation of the works. It is no coincidence that GRAV presented a whole series of exhibitions under the title Instabilite. The early work of the Belgian artist Pol Bury—to give just one other example—expressed this instability in terms of slowness, de-acceleration, and surprise. Seemingly static buildups of cable-like structures simply move, or something that from the distance seems to be stuck in place turns out to be moving

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when seen from close up, or movements take place with an almost enervating slowness. Eugene lonesco also read this as a suggestion that nothing in our society is fixed, that everything can change at any moment, that one can never be sure of anything, and especially that everything is possible behind the obvious. 27 It almost seemed as if the quote from Paul Valery that Walter Benjamin used as an epigraph to his epochal essay on the work of art had been fulfilled: “In all the arts, there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be which cannot re- main unaffected by our modern knowledge and power. For the last twenty years, neither matter nor space nor time has been what it was from time immemorial. We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art.” 28

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Jesus Rafael Soto, Cube De Paris, 1990

27—See Eugene Ionesco, Pol Bury, New York, Lefebre Gallery, 1966, passim.

28—Paul Valery, Pieces sur l’art, Paris [1934], pp. 103-4, quoted in Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technolog ical Reproducibility,” trans. Harry Zohn and Edmund Jephcott, in Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, 1938-40, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press 2003, p. 251.

Gianni Colombo, Spazio Elastico, 1967-68

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29—Questions for Franc;:ois Morellet in Francois Morellet, exh.cat. Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven 1971, p. 5.

30—”Op Art” (note 1), p. 44.

31—Centre de Recherche d’Art Visuel, founding document, reprinted in Groupe de Recherche d ‘Art Visuel (note 3), p. 5.

32—GRAV, “Assez de mystifications!” leaflet, distributed at the Biennale de Paris, 1961.

33—Popper , Die Kinetische Kunst (note 19), p. 62.

ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISION VS CAFESITTING ARTISTS

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In addition to this new concept of art. the traditional role of the artist was opened up as well. In an interview Francois Morellet replied to being compared to the American artist Frank Stella by saying: “That is the art of a true artist, and I hope to have persuaded you beyond any doubt that I am not in reality a true artist.” 29 Hence it seems only logical that a journalist commented that the members of GRAV, like Morellet, resembled “the Atomic Energy Commission more than cafésitting artists.”30 GRAV was also the most radical advocate of that position. Their founding document indicated that they “sum[med] up their artistic activities, efforts, abilities, and discoveries in the activity of a team.” In this way they planned to suppress “the traditional attitude of the unique artist genius, of the creation of immortal works.”31 They countered the unique genius with anonymous workers in a collective; that was true not only of GRAV but also for the other groups mentioned such as Gruppo N, Gruppo T, and Gruppo MID. At the Biennale de Paris in 1961 GRAV distributed a leaflet that read: “The concept of the original and inspired artist is an anachronism” and “The stable, unique, final, irreplaceable work contradicts the developments of our age.“32 It is significant that even art historians avoid traditional terminology when describing their artistic activity; Frank Popper coined the phrase “kinetic art research,” clearly in order to avoid the word artist.33 Many of them also worked as teachers—for example, Otto Piene, who for many years was the director

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of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, where he established new fields like telecommunication, holography, lasers, video, and Sky and Environmental Art, or Gabriele Devecchi, who taught both visual perception and product design at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in, Milan. Whether artists presented themselves as “light operators,” as Adolph Luther did, as “engineer artists,” as Francois Morellet was once called,34 the convention role of the artist no longer seemed to pertain to the “agents” of Op Art. Even the most “painterly” of all the protagonists, the British artist Bridget Riley, stood for an art that was liberated of individual style and hence divested of subjectivity. In conversation with fellow painter Michael Craig-Martin she emphasized that she worked with assistants from early on: “I had been a student with considerable facility and I was quite used to being regarded as someone with talent and ability, and in my first black-and-white paintings I was deliberately turning my back on a lot of things like that.

I wanted the actual content of the paintings to come through unchecked by kind of touch, so that you could see the strength or weakness of something without any barrier. I actually wanted a painting to be an extremely naked thing.”35 Hence Riley had others execute her designs. because “it’s part of the meaning of the work that I don’t want to interfere with the experience of what can be seen.”36

DOE Photo, President Harry S. Truman signs the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, August 1, 1946

34—Warren R. Young, “Op Art,” Life International, December 1964.

35—”Practising Abstraction” (note 2), p. 70.

36—Ibid., p. 71 (emphasis original).

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ART FOR EVERYONE

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From the outset this new artistic type placed viewers on the agenda; much more so than in more traditional forms of art they were supposed to participate in the paintings, spaces, and objects. Op Art was meant to be an art of close contact with the everyday; an art not requiring previous knowledge, an art without any classical, Biblical, or Christian iconography; an art that could be understood simply by everyone, or as Cyril Barrett wrote: “It was in a sense proletarian.”37 The optimism in progress of the 1960s wanted to do more than simply include it; the effect of art was intended to be more than simply an aesthetic effect but also a social one: “I dream of a social art,” wrote Victor Vasarely in his Notes Brutes as early as 1953, “The crowd, the masses, a multitude of beings! That is the new dimension. That is the unlimited space and the truth of structures. Art is the plastic aspect of community.”38 “Art was not supposed to be a commodity that was set apart from the reality of life and reserved for just a few privileged people,” as Susanne Scholl has rightly noted.39 One of the GRAV manifestos makes it clear that the current situation in art has to be reformed; it should “free the public from inhibitions and distortions in their appreciation produced by traditional aesthetics, by creating a new artist-society situation.”40 Karl Gerstner stated of the Nouvelle Tendance movement: “Our art is an art of the everyday, of a sort that some of us would characterize as socialist.”41 It is thus a logical step to take art to the streets, which GRAV did, and not simply in 37—Barrett , Op Art (note 4), p. 62.

38—Victor Vasarely, “Notes Brutes,” in Victor Vasarely: 50 ans de creation / 50 Years of Creation, exh.cat. Musee olympique, Lausanne 1995, p. 110.

39—Susanne Scholl , “Die Neuen Tendenzen: Entwicklung einer europaischen Kunstlerbewegung,” in Die Neuen Tendenzen (note 14), p. 45.

40—”Die gegenwartige Situation der Bildenden Kunst umformen!” GRAV Manifest, October 25, 1961, reprinted in Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (note 3), p.

7; English translation as “Transforming the Current Situation in the Plastic Arts.”

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a metaphorical sense: in April 1966 the collective organized Une journee dans la rue [A day in the street], with artworks and actions distributed throughout Paris, from the Quartier Latin to the Champs-E|ysees. Direct contact with the audience was intensified in a wide variety of ways, not just on that occasion. For example, GRAV developed questionnaires that could be used to determine the opinion of viewers with regard to the works presented: “Do you believe the works shown are: artworks, avant-garde, interesting research, a joke?”

“What appeals to you about them: the color, the movement, the space, the optics?“42 They hoped to make a contribution to democratization in the process. This sort of anti-elitist gesture was not limited to GRAV; it was found nearly everywhere in Op Art at the time.

Looking back, Enzo Mari described his conception in an analogous way: “During those years I thought I could reach a different audience in factory workers. That is why I did design, not to make products but to explain my ideas to those who produce the things. I produce the drawings not because I am an artist but in order to make it clear to the workers that they have to be in the position to do it themselves That was my concern.“43

GRAV: A day in the street, Paris, April 19, 1966

23

41—Karl Gerstner, “Oue’est-ce que la Nouvelle Tendance?” in Propositions visuelles du mouvement international Nouvelle Tendance, exh.cat. Musee des Arts decoratifs, Palais du Louvre Pavilion Marsan, Paris 1964, unpaginated; cf.

Die Neuen Tendenzen (note 14), 26.

42—The evaluation of the que stionnaire is found in Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel, 1960-1968, Mostra retrospettiva, Lago di Como, 1975, pp. 28-29.

43—Interview with Enzo Mari, May 23, 2006, Milan, in Die Neuen Tendenzen (note 14), p. 220.

GRAV: A day in the street, Opera, Paris, 1996

OP ART

IN SEARCH OF THE NEW VIEWER

24

Op Art speaks to viewers directly; it draws them in, all but demanding their participation, often in a literal sense. That not only placed it at the focus of the discourse on the pace of modernity in the mid-1960s, when forerunners of French theory in the person of Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault were calling for the death of the author and the birth of the observer. Op Art offered multilayered artistic conceptions for participation for this theoretical construction of the integration of the viewer into the meaning of the artwork: not only do images and objects that are never static demand their unattainable completion through the often necessary and yet naturally occurring action of completion by the eye and mind of the beholder, but the works themselves also call for direct intervention. In Op Art the linear relationship between the viewer and the depiction is overcome; and according to Cyril Barrett, Op Art does not offer “viewers a finished painting but rather confronts them with a situation that necessitates their reaction before the pictorial effect can develop completely.“44 In addition to a completing gaze, the viewer is called upon, for example, when Agam. in his Tableaux transformables, offers the viewer an opportunity to intervene directly in the design of the painting by designing the individual elements to be employed variably and permitting the viewers to change their orientation or position. Marina Appolonio’s Dynamic Circular Movements can also be set in motion, as can the Grande Disco of the Gruppo MID, or the Struttu44—Barrett, Op Art (note 4), p. 26.

45—”Participation: A la recherche d’un nouveau spectateur;’ Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (Garcia-Rossi, Le Pare, Morellet, Sobrino, Stein, Yvaral), Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund 1968.

OP ART

razione dinamica of the Gruppo N. Material conditions also support this conception. It is surely no coincidence that mirrors and mirrored surfaces occupied such a central role. Not only is the mirror, as an optical instrument, in a position to extend the capabilities of our eyes, it literally puts the viewers into the picture. In his Spherical Concave Mirror Objects Adolf Luther did just this, as did the environments of this period in which mirrors were often employed—for example, in Megert’s Mirror Room or Boriani’s Ambienle stroboscopico. Nevertheless, the physical engagement is total: viewers fall into a bottomless pit, are bathed in colorful light, clamber through a course. or are sent through labyrinths, gambling rooms, or street actions. One of GRAV’s significant exhibitions, Participation, concerned the search to a new viewer. “We can no longer accept the complete ignorance of the artist who creates his or her work without considering the circumstances under which it will be assimilated by the viewer,” announced Morellet.46 In that spirit it is certainly justified, to speak of the work as a social experience—following Guy Brett,47 who described Soto’s work as such—or even of a kind of “social kinetisme,” following Jean Clay, who claimed the term above all for the younger generation of GRAV, who sought to intensify the shift of the principle of possible transformation by the audience in such a way that at any moment it is in a position to adopt a dominant role in the relationship between the work and the audience.

25

46—Morellet, in exh.cat. Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund 1968, S. 42.

47—Guy Brett, “The Century of Kinesthesia,” in Force Fields: Phases of the Kinetic, exh.cat. MACBA, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Hayward Gallery, London 2000, p. 31.

GRAV, staircase environment in the exhibition Plus

by Minus, Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, 1968

OP ART

PERCEPTION

26

Much has been written about the physical circumstances of Op Art, the many effects, of which the moire is the best known and most memorable. Entire studies have been dedicated to describing the effects of irradiation, anamorphosis, or the Hermann grid illusion.48 Ultimately these reflections relate to idealistic notions of an isolable perception. One can only respond along with Jonathan Crary: “Vision and its effects are always inseparable from the possibilities of an observing subject who is both the historical product and the site of certain practices, techniques, institutions, and procedures of subjectification.“49 From our perspective today concentration on the eye seems almost like a deliberate misunderstanding. Or at least this fixation, if you will, follows in a series of modernist ideas of vision and the gaze as found, for example, in Clement Greenberg’s notion of “pure seeing.” In it a pure visual seeing meets a pure art of the sublime. A conception of eye and gaze that is oriented more around the optical apparatus of a camera eye than around seeing in context, which includes social, psychological, and other factors. Op Art is an art of the radicalization of the eye, but one that goes far beyond the perceptual givens of this one sense, which can hardly be isolated from the others.

This is an aspect that was already seen as problematic by the artists themselves at the time, like Morellet, for example, who wrote: “But the other senses are there, and the feeling for noises, smells, the contact of warmth remains alive, and the noise, the smells, the contact, and 48—See Karina TUrr, Op Art: Stil, Ornament oder Experiment?, Berlin: Mann 1986 .

49—Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1990, p. 5 (emphasis original).

OP ART

the warmth cannot be suppressed. Let’s take warmth: no one has ever really studied its influence on aesthetic perception. It is clear that if the temperature of a work is ten degrees above or below the outside temperature, the red of a wall will seem correspondingly more or less vivid. For if it is true that red surroundings give an impression of warmth, a powerful heat will intensify the impression of red.”50 Werner Spies also remarked in his essay on documenta 4: “Studies have shown that it is a mistake to view these illusions as a homogenous field of specialized phenomena that drop out of the usual system of perception. We would there- fore also do better to dispense with the concept of the optical illusion or of the psychological model of perception.”51 Perhaps Max lmdahl provided us with the key to understanding Op Art when he asserted that the question is not how—that is by what means—a certain impression results but rather what it represents. 52 And so Op Art tells us about seeing as transgression, about expanding perception by making the eye an active organ, about breaking away from traditional pictorial aesthetics, and of a world whose multiple dimensions can scarcely be grasped by the eye. That is no small quantity of knowledge that today’s visual culture can take from it.

50—Morellet, in Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (note 3), 42.

51—Werner Spies, “op art und kinetik,” in documenta 4, exh. cat. Kassel 1968, p. xvii.

52— lmdahl, “Probleme der Optical Art “ (note 23), p. 216.

OP ART

27

TOMORROW

THE ART OF

WILL BE A

COLLECTIVE

TREASURE

OR IT WILL 30

NOT OP ART

BE

ART 31

AT ALL OP ART

VICTOR VASARELY

Victor Vasarely

OP ART

George Rickey is probably right when he says that ‘the primary source for the artistic use of optical phenomena is not the teaching of Albers on colour but the painting and influence of Vasarely’. Victor Vasarely was born in’ Pecs in Hungary in 1908. As a child he was highly inventive. Speaking of his ‘Transparencies’ he writes: “In my native Hungary the windows are double because of the extremes of the continental climate. One winter when I drew a sun-face on the outer pane, then, shutting the inside window-frame, I tried to reproduce exactly the same drawing on the second transparent surface, separated from the first by some six or eight inches . . . These two sun-faces that were superimposed when looked at from directly in front, doubled their grimaces when I moved my head to the right or to the left. This crude little cinema has left deep traces in my subconscious.”

At the same time he developed a passion for grids: “In about 1913, as a child, I injured my forearm while playing . . . The wound was dressed with gauze, a light white fabric that changed its shape at the slightest touch. I never tired’ gazing at this micro-universe, ever the same and yet other. I would play with it, pulling the crowded threads one by one.”

Seven years later, in 1920, when he was twelve and at the lycée, he was fascinated by isobar maps of the earth—‘those equal lines energized the well-known contours of the continents’—and the iso-clinical, isochronous, and isochromatic lines of physics completed his vision. ‘I passionately loved those networks. I filled whole notebooks with them.’

On leaving school he began a course in medicine, but abandoned it two years later and took a job as an assistant book-keeper in a ball-bearing factory. One day the boss asked him to do some posters. He entered one for a competition in La Vie Publicitaire. He did not

33

Ezinor – Jesus Rafael Soto 1949

Victory Vasarely

34

a job as an assistant book-keeper in a ball-bearing factory. One day the boss asked him to do some posters.

He entered one for a competition in La Vie Publicitaire.

He did not win, but the magazine introduced him to modern art.

“It was fantastic. I was 21 at the time. There were masses of posters inspired by the Bauhaus as well as reproductions of Gropius, Kandinsky, Klee, George Rickey is probably right when he says that ‘the primary source for the artistic use of optical phenomena is not the teaching of Albers on colour but the painting and influence of Vasarely’. Victor Vasarely was born in’ Pecs in Hungary in 1908. As a child he was highly inventive. Speaking of his ‘Transparencies’ he writes: “In my native Hungary the windows are double because of the extremes of the continental climate. One winter when I drew a sun-face on the outer pane, then, shutting the inside window-frame, I tried to reproduce exactly the same drawing on the second transparent surface, separated from the first by some six or eight inches . . . These two sun-faces that were superimposed when looked at from directly in front, doubled their grimaces when I moved my head to the right or to the left. This crude little cinema has left deep traces in my subconscious.”

At the same time he developed a passion for grids: “In about 1913, as a child, I injured my forearm while playing . . . The wound was dressed with gauze, a light white fabric that changed its shape at the slightest touch. I never tired’ gazing at this micro-universe, ever the same and yet other. I would play with it, pulling the crowded threads one by one.”

Seven years later, in 1920, when he was twelve and at the lycée, he was fascinated by isobar maps of the earth—‘those equal lines energized the well-known contours of the continents’—and the iso-clinical, iso-

Cassiopee II – Victor Vasarely 1958

Victory Vasarely

L’Echiquier – Victor Vasarely, 1935

35

Victory Vasarely

36

chronous, and isochromatic lines of physics completed his vision. ‘I passionately loved those networks. I filled whole notebooks with them.’

On leaving school he began a course in medicine, but abandoned it two years later and took a job as an assistant book-keeper in a ball-bearing factory. One day the boss asked him to do some posters. He entered one for a competition in La Vie Publicitaire. He did not win, but the magazine introduced him to modern art.

“It was fantastic. I was 21 at the time. There were masses of posters inspired by the Bauhaus as well as reproductions of Gropius, Kandinsky, Klee, Breuer, Albers, Moholy-Nagy—and so on.”

It was there he came across Bortnyik’s offer to pass on what he had learnt at the Dessau Bauhaus. Vasarely attended Bortnyik’s ‘Bauhaus’ from 1928—9 and there, he tells us, “I swallowed the lot pell-mell—Cubism, Leger, Malevich, Mondrian, Tatlin, Lissitzky, Chagall, Le Corbusier, Matisse.

His views on these artists have been described elsewhere, but it might not be out of place to add one more quotation here: “Malevich ended up with zero, a white square on a white ground. Mondrian too led into a culde-sac. I didn’t want to follow him. I did not want to add to the number of navel-contemplating works. This concoction of poetical, rarified, perfect specimens seemed out of touch with the problems of modern man.”

In the following year, 1930, feeling suffocated in’ Hungary, he left for Paris. While with Bortnyik he had made a thorough study of lines and criss-cross networks. ‘For ten years applied and experimental graphism was to be my principal occupation in Paris.’ For a living he worked at the Havas, Draeger and Devambez print works doing pharmaceutical advertising. Then in 1935 he bought a book on modern art with reproductions of Klee, Ernst and all the artists he had studied

Zebra – Victor Vasarely 1938

Keple Gestalt – Victor Vasarely 1968

Victor Vasarely

Vega-Nor – Victor Vasarely 1969

37

Victor Vasarely

38

in Budapest forgotten. As when a graphic and commeres that wereand superimposed looked at from cial artist he had felt superior to painters whose work directly in front, doubled their grimaces when I seemed useless.

Reading that book he realized that the moved my head to the right or to the left. This painters were the real thatinallmy thesubbest crude little cinema hasinnovators left deep and traces ideas in publicity work came from them. conscious.”

During early years Paris, 1931-2, he madefor his At the the same time he indeveloped a passion first optical works.

Theyaswere geometrical drawings for grids: “In about 1913, a child, I injured my forefabric prints.

‘Many. .of. The thesewound 10 x I0was cm dressed drawings,with prearm while playing tentiously enlarged, have constituted gauze, a light whitemight fabric that changed an itsanticipashape tory collection of “Op Art” . . .

In any case in 1954—6, at the slightest touch. I never tired’ gazing at this I developed majorever works them: Eridan, micro-universe, thefrom same andTlinko, yet other.

I [etc.]’

These were followed m’ 1933-8 by the figurawould play with it, pulling the crowded threads one tiveone.”

Op works already discussed. He says: “Curiously by was inlater, my ‘Two-dimensional Studies’ enough, Sevenit years in 1920, when Graphic’ he was twelve executed 1933 and 1938 that by theisobar optical maps kinetand at thebetween lycée, he was fascinated icism appeared inequal a vigorous decisive way. of thefinally earth—‘those linesand energized the Checkerboards, Harlequins, Zebras, Tigers, Prisoners well-known contours of the continents’—and the and Martians moved, not and by mimeticism, butlines by the iso-clinical, isochronous, isochromatic of aggressiveness with which their structures struck the physics completed his vision. ‘I passionately loved retina’.networks.

Although figurative, rich in inventhose I filled these wholestudies, notebooks with tion, constituted the basic repertory of my abstract them.’ period inschool the plane, undertaken in 1954.” kinetic On leaving he began a course in med The reference to mimeticism has to do with the icine, but abandoned it two years later and took produced after 1938, at the time he discovawork job as an assistant book-keeper inwhen a ball-bearing ered Futurism.

These only imitations of some movefactory.

One day the were boss asked him to do ment, mere optical deceptions, trompe l’oeil.in‘Like posters.

He entered one for a competition La Futurism itself,’ he says, ‘these studies of movement Vie Publicitaire. He did not win, but the magazine were on the wrong track.’ art.

Between 1938 and 1951 introduced him to modern didfantastic. no more optical Vasarely “It was I was works.

21 at the time. There

During this period he worked a commercial artist. were masses of posters inspiredasby the Bauhaus as He had plans for opening a school, and to gain support well as reproductions of Gropius, Kandinsky, Klee, for his project held an exhibition ofso over a hundred Breuer, Albers,heMoholy-Nagy—and on.” cards in 1944 m’ apartments owned by Denise display It was there he came across Bortnyik’s offer René.

Though the exhibition was a success, he got no to pass on what he had learnt at the Dessau Bauencouragement to open the school. ‘Bauhaus’ from haus.

Vasarely attended Bortnyik’s In 1946and he went through a brief and Symbol1928—9 there, he tells us, Tachist “I swallowed the

Vega – Victor Vasarely 1957

Bora III – Victor Vasarely 1964

Victor Vasarely

Vonal Stri – Victor Vasarely 1975

39

Victor Vasarely

40

ist phase. “This was where I started to follow a lot of false scents. There was the gestatory period in 1946: pictures made entirely of paste, of which I sold dozens.

I could have become an Esteve or Bazaine. The same year I went through a symbolist period full of angels, prisoners, the devil, rather like Prevert. I could have gone on, but what I had learnt from the Bauhaus made me rebel.”

In the summer of 1947, while on holiday on the beach at Belle-Ile, he returned to geometrical abstraction. “The abstract was only revealed to me in 1947 when I was able to recognize that pure form and pure colour could represent the world.

There followed, from 1947 to 1951, a period of ‘pure composition’, though not quite as pure as he would have liked. Though he recognized in pebbles and pieces of glass polished by the rise and fall of the waves the inn’er geometry of nature, he still suffered from traces of gestural painting. He also discovered that it was not easy to rid oneself of figurative elements—he called them phantoms of his past—a line that becomes a horizon, an angel with outspread wings, etc. Although the climate was not favourable to abstract painting—Tachism only became popular in 1950—Vasarely received support from other artists: Deyrolle, Dewasne and Arp in 1946; Mortensen and Poliakoff in the following year. They met on Saturday nights and discussed their work.

His return to optical art in’ 1951 came about through a return to the grills and networks of lines. He first made some small linear drawings which were photographically enlarged to room Size and exhibited under the title ‘Photographisms’. (They were also used as a setting for a ballet.) The transposition of these drawings, with their character intact, to a super-human scale, demonstrated for Vasarely the power of the machine as an aid in artistic production. These were followed in’

Eridan II – Victor Vasarely 1956

Victor Vasarely

Tekers-MC – Victor Vasarely 1981

41

Victor Vasarely

42

1952 by ‘Grills” which consisted of two superimposed similar networks. These ‘Photographisms’, as we have seen, are only partially optical in their’ effect, and the ‘Grills’, though they give a much stronger impression of movement owning to the displacement of periodic structures, are often too structured to be fully Op. The ‘Transparencies’ and ‘Deep Kinetic Works’ (described above), which he made in’ 1953 and the ‘Kinetic Works in the Plane’, begun in 1954, are quite definitely optical in their effect. (All of these have been discussed elsewhere m’ the book.) It should be noted that the ‘Deep Kinetic Works’ are ‘kinetic’ only in the sense that they involve actual movement on the part of the spectator, and the ‘Kinetic Works in the Plane’ because they give an impression of movement.

In ‘Planetary Folklore’ Vasarely sings the praises of optical kineticism: “The stake is no longer the heart but the retina, the refined mind becomes the subject of experimental psychology. Sharp black-white contrasts, the unendurable vibration of complementary colours, the flickering of rhythmed networks and permuted structures, the optical kineticism of plastic components, all physical phenomena present in our works, the role of which is no longer to create wonder or to plunge us in sweet melancholy, but to stimulate us and provide us with wild joys.”

And in his ‘Notes for a Manifesto’, in what has come to be called the ‘Yellow Manifesto’, published on the occasion of the Movement exhibition at the Denise Rene gallery in 1955 (at which Agam, Soto, Calder, Duchamp, Tinguely, Bury and Jacobsen also exhibited), he refers to his work as ‘kinetic’ (cinetique) in passages of some obscurity.

“THE SCREEN IS FLAT, BUT, BY PERMITTING MOVEMENT, IT IS ALSO SPACE . . . We possess the instruments and the technique and finally the science to

Gestalt-Sin – Victor Vasarely 1969

Victor Vasarely

EG 1-2 – Victor Vasarely 1965

43

Victor Vasarely

44

attempt a plastic-kinetic . . . The animation of the plastic develops today . . . by the methodical employment of the CINEMATOGRAPHIC DOMAIN by the discipline of abstraction. We are at the dawn of a great epoch.

THE ERA OF PLASTIC PROJECTIONS ON SCREENS, FLAT OR IN DEPTH, IN DAYLIGHT 0R DARKNESS, IS BEGINNING.” With these optical-kinetic works, he believes that he has brought painting into line with the outlook of our day: “At a time when mankind has extended his knowledge to cover both macro- and micro-cosmos, how can an artist get excited about the same things that made up the day-to-day world of the painter of the past, restricted as it was to what came within his immediate sense-range—his home, the people he knew, his garden . . . Henceforth art will adequately express the cosmic age of atoms and stars.”

The 1955 Exhibition caused something of a sensation. It brought together for the first time artists with a common purpose and interest in the artistic use of kinetic and optical effects. From now on Op art can be considered as a movement, and no longer as an isolated phenomenon or the pursuit of a few artists ploughing lone furrows. (The name ‘Op’, of course, was not given to it till ten years later.)

Since 1955 Vasarely has been building on the foundations laid in the early ’fifties. Not all his work has been Op in the strict sense. The most significant developments in his art have been: the transition from black and white to colour in the early ’sixties, though without any of the optical movement of other optical colourists; the introduction of tonal values about 1965; three-dimensional solid objects—pyramids and columns—in blocks or ‘units’ of coloured geometrical forms; and the design of manufactured multiples. Other minor developments include the use of deforming glass

Stèle – Victor Vasarely 1988

Victor Vasarely

Infin – Victor Vasarely 1979-1988

45

Victor Vasarely

46

in his ‘Deep Kinetic Works’ of I958. In some of his most recent work, Tri-Dim (I969), he seems to have projected the columns and pyramids back on to the canvas as ambiguous forms of great solidity. This marks his furthest departure from strict Op so far. But he has not abandoned it entirely, since he is also doing works on the Vega theme.

Vasarely has also done a number of environmental works, op murals and screens, such as those for the Cite’ Universitaire in Caracas in 1954. He believes that his art has a sociological value. For this reason he attaches much importance to the mechanical multiplication of his works. And he usually entrusts the execution of the work to his assistants, once he has worked out the idea. This is possible because he works with expansible plastic units and the hand of the artist has no significance for him.

Henceforth the initial creative object will be of ‘small- format’ made up of constants . . . an expandible medium, doubling as a sort of ‘partition scenario’ which will enable the artist to recreate on canvas, a tapestry, a fresco, an album of prints, or a plastic kinetic synthesis, or even a filmed abstract symphony.

One consequence of this, in his opinion, is the end of the individual artist and the unique picture.

It would seem that there is no difference between me and any vulgar careerist. A difference exists, however. His ideas date from the Renaissance; I fight for the debunking of the artist and an end to individual pictures.

In conclusion, one could say of Vasarely that, in spite of the influence he has had on the evolution of the Op movement, in a way, optical effects are only incidental to his work. His primary interest is the ‘plastic unity of form-colour’ on a plane surface or pure composition.

If Vasarely has inspired Op artists and produced some outstanding works of this kind, he is not primarily, much

Stèle – Victor Vasarely 1988

Victor Vasarely

Micron – Victor Vasarely 1984

47

Victor Vasarely

less exclusively, an Op artist himself. His respect for the plane surface and the clearly defined, if ambiguous, form keeps him within what I have called the cubist tradition, even though, in departing from direct reference to natural objects and the spatial orientations of figurative painting, he has broken with Cubism proper.

48

Tuz-Tuz – Victor Vasarely 1976

Victor Vasarely

EPULL – Victor Vasarely 1970

49

Victor Vasarely

Quasar-Kek – Victor Vasarely 1971

50

Victor Vasarely

Phobos – Victor Vasarely 1971

51

Victor Vasarely

Bianco – Victor Vasarely 1987

52

Victor Vasarely

Vilag – Victor Vasarely 1978

53

Victor Vasarely

PETER SEDGLEY

(John) Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith, bromide print, circa 1970 11 7/8 in. x 9 5/8 in.

Peter Sedgley was born in London in 1930 and studied architecture for some years. But he found that his work as an architect did not give him the scope for invention and the exercise of the imagination which he needed, so he took to painting and is largely a self-taught artist. His earliest works were frottage rubbings and monotypes, but, though these gave him plenty of scope for free invention, they lacked discipline and purpose. It was in the work of Bridget Riley that he discovered, in 1961, the kind of art he was searching for, restrained without being restrictive. Unlike Bridget Riley, his interest very soon turned to colour and the reactions of form and colour, using the full chromatic scale.

Sedgley has never been interested in producing satisfying combinations of form and colour but in making them function, that is, react with one another to produce a third thing, entirely new, which he calls the ‘characteristic’. This may involve an impression of movement in otherwise static elements or a moire effect, as in the ‘Trace’ series (1964) discussed earlier, and it always involves colour modifications (Blue and Green Modulation, 1964,’ Yellow Attenuation, 1965). By varying the areas of different colours he produces tonal changes and even changes of hue. Sometimes one has to approach quite close to the canvas to assure oneself that the colours are in fact homogeneous.

In his early pictures (up to 1965) he worked with precise, hard-edged forms, mostly straight lines and Circles, and occasionally with small units like small circles with displaced axial lines as in Mill(1964).

At that stage he was concerned to find a basic ‘vocabulary’: ‘I set about clarifying for myself the basic premises for art and in so doing established a keyboard of colours and a metre capable of mod-

55 Glide – Peter Sedgley

Target Dive – Peter Sedgley 1966

Peter Sedgley

56

ulation.’ He used a scale of eight colours, of which only three were used in any picture, with the yellow playing a role equivalent to the dominant. (Like so many Op painters he uses terms drawn from music, and the resemblance between his work and music—scale, tempo, counter- point, modulation, rather than the emotional equivalent—is very striking.)

In 1965 a noticeable change took place in his work with the softening and blurring of edges and the use of ‘shaped’ canvases, mainly hexagonal.

Within these shapes—which formed an integral part of the picture and were not, as with most rectangular canvases, merely the place where the picture ends— he placed soft, glowing blossoms of colour in regular grids (Suspense, 1966).

But the most spectacular pictures of this period were his soft-edged targets. These grew out of works such as Manfiestations or Cycle (1964) in which concentric rings of colour were placed on a black ground. These tended to pulsate, and the pulsation increased with the use of the soft edge.

These soft-edged targets move in depth, expand, contract and glow against the absolute darkness of the black ground (Red Quantum, Phase, Quantum, 1966). They have often been compared to Fangor’s target pictures and it has been said that they were inspired by them. While there is much in common, particularly the softened edge and the pulsating effect, there is this important difference. Sedgley always adheres to his colour scale, juxtaposing adjacent colours and modulating through them—red to orange to green to blue— whereas Fangor rarely does this and often uses black or some dark colour to mediate between two contrasting colours. Fangor usually works with dark against a light ground,

Target Dive – Peter Sedgley 1970

Blue Pulse – Peter Sedgley 1972

Peter Sedgley

Warbel – Peter Sedgley 1971

57

Peter Sedgley

58

Sedgley with light against dark. As for the influence of Fangor on Sedgley, the author is a witness that Sedgley was already painting his targets before he saw Fangor’s.

Unlike Bridget Riley, Sedgley finds the circle a good shape to work with. It is ‘anonymous’, homogeneous, with no variation in outline, and thus allows him to concentrate on colour and give the minimum attention to shape. In 1967 while attempting to find an artificial light which stimulated daylight and would be suitable for evening showings in his studio, he began to experiment with the effects of using colour filters to illuminate his target pictures.

The results were quite remarkable. Some colours changed hue, others disappeared, others turned black. He then produced the system of colour illumination using three coloured light sources (red, yellow and blue) already described. In these ‘Chromatic Variations’ Sedgley was merely playing light on to static target pictures. With his ‘Videorotors’ (1968) he set the targets in motion. In place of the softedged concentric rings he now used concentric blocks of luminous paint, and in place of the three light sources, ultra-violet and scroboscopic light.

Sedgley has also made a series of target ceramics which capture the light and subtly transform it—the light in the white centre of a ceramic may appear pink. Now he has a project for a dome covered on the inside with concentric circles of colour on which a light programme can be projected. It is to be contemplated in’ complete isolation. He calls it Solo.

Untitled – Peter Sedgley 1977

Peter Sedgley

Glow – Peter Sedgley 1930

59

Peter Sedgley

Yellow Circle – Peter Sedgley 1930

60

Peter Sedgley

Colour Cycle III – Peter Sedgley 1970

61

Peter Sedgley

Yellow Attenuation – Peter Sedgley 1965

62

Peter Sedgley

Cycle – Peter Sedgley 1965

63

Peter Sedgley

Oranges and Lemons – Peter Sedgley 1980

64

Peter Sedgley

Untitled – Peter Sedgley 1977

65

Peter Sedgley

JESUS RAFAEL SOTO

Jesus Soto

OP ART

The development of Soto as an optical and kinetic artist closely parallels that of Vasarely in time. He came to Paris in 1950. By 1951 he was ‘groping his way towards vibrations and optical art’. In 1954 he made his first ‘Superimpositions’.

The two artists share certain common influences, notably Mondrian, Malevich and Kandinsky. They both pursue a pure form of abstraction and both want to carry abstraction beyond the stage reached

by Mondrian and Malevich to something more dynamic. There is a possible discrepancy in their attitude to Mondrian, however. Vasarely sees him as the painter who reduced the visible world to its simplest elements while Malevich began the process of building up a vocabulary of abstract forms. Soto, on the other hand, saw Mondrian as truly abstract.

‘He was the only artist I knew who was completely abstract.’ He does not regard Vasarely as a completely abstract painter: ‘In Dewasne’s work, and in Vasarely’s, the forms are clearly derived from the world of objects.’ Even Vasarely would admit that this is true of his work up to 1951 and he would probably agree with Soto’s own claim: ‘My work is totally abstract. It was born out of a study of painting, not of life.’ Fifteen years junior to Vasarely, Soto came on the scene at a time when geometrical abstraction was already accepted and established.

He could, therefore, take it as his point of departure.

Jesus-Raphael Soto was born in Ciudad Bolivar in the Orinoco Province of Venezuela in 1923.

At the age of fifteen he became a sign painter. A Lebanese member of a Surrealist group taught him to draw. His technique was so good that the local people and their bishop signed a petition to have him sent to art school in Caracas. There he

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Ezinor – Jesus Rafael Soto 1949

Jesus Rafael Soto

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asked at the school to copy nature,’ he says, ‘I was shocked and disillusioned.’ He had the good fortune, however, to work under Monsanto who was enlightened enough to tell him: ‘You want to go further than my ideas . . . well, go ahead, then.’

Even in those days Soto had achieved that clarity of expression which is one of the outstanding characteristics of his work. Cruz-Diez, a fellow student, remarked: ‘For you, Soto, painting is something very un- complicated.’ ‘My own sense of clarity,’ says Soto, ‘astonished me.’

After a period as professor and director at the School of Fine Art, Maracaibo, from 1947, he left for Paris in 1950. Paris for Soto meant Impressionism. He was struck immediately on landing at Cannes by the ‘Impressionist light’. Impressionism, whether that of the French or of Turner, meant an enormous amount to him’.

While the other Venezuelans in Pans’ studied abstract art under Dewasne and Pillet, Soto worked on his own. He painted huge canvases of simple geometrical elements. He had very quickly put impressionist techniques behind him and had fallen under the spell of Mondrian. Since 1950, when he first saw Mondrian’s paintings of 1917 composed of plus and minus signs, he has never given a thought to pointillism. At first he made irregular forms ‘in order to dynamize the impeccable composition of the Dutch master’.

At first these systems or grills of dots were super-imposed directly on one another at a slight angle— as with Vasarely’s grills of the same period—but in 1954 the transparent grills were placed in front of one another separated by some distance. The vibration was increased by the movement of the spectator, and not only were the

Ovalo Rojo – Jesus Rafael Soto 1980

Ovalo Verde – Jesus Rafael Soto 1980

Jesus Rafael Soto

Esfera Theospacio– Jesus Rafael Soto 1989

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Jesus Rafael Soto

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forms annihilated, but the distance between them as well. The first of these, White Dots on Black Dots, which Soto describes as ‘my first kinetic work’, which he exhibited that year at the Salon des Realites Nouvelles, and the impressive Metamorphosis’ of the same year have already been mentioned. But, though he refers to them as ‘kin’etic’ because they call for actual movement on the part of the spectator, a definitive transition to Kinetic art did not take place till’ the following year.

The real revolution occurred in 1955, my definitive transition from optical art—in which the picture could be embraced m’ one glance without the intervention of movement—to kinetic art, in which movement and time- duration are directly experienced, becoming a fundamental constitutive dimension in my work.

Soto’s distinction between optical and kinetic art has already been discussed. Though some distinction such as Soto makes is valid, I shall continue to treat his ‘kinetic’ works as strictly optical, since, whatever they may do besides, they function optically. Soto implicitly admits this when he describes the genesis of these works. The idea came to him when, in April 1955, he saw for the first time what he calls Marcel Duchamp’s ‘optical machine’. ‘I said to myself that I would make the image move without a motor.’ Apart from the use of plexiglass, the introduction grids and the greater distance between foreground and background, the main difference between the ‘kinetic’ works and the earlier superimpositions lies chiefly in the use of moire effect. It was this which finally brought about the complete destruction of form and distance, the dematerialization of the elements.

Incidentally, Soto tells us he arrived at the idea

Paralelas Vibrantes – Jesus Rafael Soto 1979

Jesus Rafael Soto

Negro y Azul– Jesus Rafael Soto 1971

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Jesus Rafael Soto

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of super-imposition by taking the juxtaposition of profile and full-face in a Cubist picture of a woman for superimposition of view points. ‘That is the reason why later on my research went in the direction of superimposition!’

Sufficient has been said about Soto’s use of moire elsewhere. It remains only to say that between 1955 and 1957 Soto produced some stunning plexiglass superimpositions, one of the most spectacular being that entitled Spiral. In 1955 he took part in the Movement Exhibition and held a one-man exhibition in’ the following year.

In 1957 the plexiglass superimpositions gave way to the ‘Vibration Structures’—structures of wire or rods placed in front of a moire background—and to the series of ‘Relations’ consisting of coloured squares and rectangles also against a moire background. Both of these have already been discussed.

It is worth mentioning, however, that the ‘Relations’ had their origin in certain works done from 1953 on. These—for example, Two Squares in Space (1953), Metamorphosis of a Square (1955) and Suggested Cubes (1955)—were concerned with the suggestion of volume by the use of a ‘shadow’ square on a flat surface and a relief square in front of the surface.

In the earlier ‘Vibration Structures’ it is possible to perceive the suspended wire structure or the rods as distinct elements, even though they dissolve on being moved or when the spectator moves. But as Soto’s work progressed, the rods tended to become more ethereal and to form a sort of veil or luminous curtain. One can trace this development through the ‘Ecriture’ series from 1963 and the ‘Immaterial Vibrations’ (1965). Soto is at present interested in creating environments and free stand-

Object Ed. – Jesus Rafael Soto 1964

Jesus Rafael Soto

Multiple II– Jesus Rafael Soto 1969

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Jesus Rafael Soto

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ing works with rods or nylon threads, suspended from the ceiling or rising from the ground, instead of the traditional reliefs attached to the wall, which are isolated by clearly defined boundaries. The ‘Kinetic Environments’ or ‘Vibrating Walls’ (1966), the ‘Penetrables’, Moving Saturation, Green Expansion, Yellow Progression and Cube of Ambiguous Space (1968—9, plate 58), all illustrate his current preoccupation. This is entirely in line with the general development of his art—the transformation of material and space into light. Now the ‘immaterial’, light-like effect is becoming, like light itself, all embracing.

“Even at the centre of a cyclorama, whether kinetic or static, we are always face to face with the work. We remain observers. My ‘Penetrables’ are very different. Composed of metal rods or nylon threads hung from the ceiling, like a rain of metal, they envelop the whole space. They allow us no escape. We are no longer face to face; we are inside. Besides, today we know very well that we have not got man on one side and the world on the other, as they thought in the time of the Renaissance. We are immersed in the trinity—spacetime-matter—as the fish is immersed in the water.”

Soto has not enjoyed anything like the reputation nor had anything like the influence that Vasarely has had. Yet I am inclined to agree with Jack Burnham when he says: ‘Perhaps the kinetic sensibility in Optical Art owes its origins more to Soto than to any other artist.’ Notions such as vibration, dematerialization and immateriality, serialism, pure relations, repetition, the annihilation of forms, spectator participation, and the relationship of art to modern scientific concepts of time, space and matter, have all found embodiment in Soto’s

Purpura Y Plata – Jesus Rafael Soto 1969

Jesus Rafael Soto

Cuadrado Negro y Plata – Jesus Rafael Soto 1970

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Jesus Rafael Soto

work. These, and not retinal stimulation, are what Optical art is all about. If Op art requires a justification, it can point to Soto, and I should be very surprised if, on the merits of his work alone, it does not stand the test of time.

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Agnes – Jesus Rafael Soto 1986

Multiple IV - Jai-Alai – Jesus Rafael Soto 1969

Jesus Rafael Soto

Color abajo – Jesus Rafael Soto 1991

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Jesus Rafael Soto

MAQUETTE DE LA SPHÈRE LUTETIA 53/100 – Jesus Rafael Soto 1995-2014

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Jesus Rafael Soto

Tige Vibrante – Jesus Rafael Soto 1967

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Jesus Rafael Soto

Ambivalencia Victor – Jesus Rafael Soto 1961

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Jesus Rafael Soto

Cubo y Extensión – Jesus Rafael Soto 1971

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Jesus Rafael Soto

Gran Marron – Jesus Rafael Soto 2003

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Jesus Rafael Soto

Untitled – Jesus Rafael Soto 1965

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Jesus Rafael Soto

CARLOS CRUZ DIEZ

Cruz-Diez

OP ART

Of the other artists working in Pan’s who were not members of groups, special mention must be made of the work of Carlos Cruz-Diez. Cruz-Diez was born in Caracas in 1923 and studied with Soto and Debourg at the School of Fine Art there (194045). From 1944 till he arrived in Paris in 1960 he was connected in one way or another with design and publicity. During that time he visited New York (1947) and Barcelona and Paris (1955—6). While in Europe he became interested in the physical qualities of colour and this led to the ‘Physichromies’ (physical chromatism) in 1959. As he says, his ‘Physichromies’ are the fruit of experimentation. They are based on physical experiences which become important for him’ as soon as they we used to create an interesting visual event.

The ‘Physichromies’ were preceded by reliefs of coloured cylinders sometimes interconnected and perforated by rods (1954). These were followed (1955—6) by superimpositions, reliefs and freestanding objects with biomorphic forms—he called them ‘forestal signs’ and they do look like leaf patterns or light patterns in a forest (3 Venezualan forest). Between 1957 and 1959 his interest in the optical effects of form and colour grew. His canvases, composed of trapeziums and rhomboids of striped zebra-like contrasting colours, became quite frenetic. Meanwhile he had been studying the problem of colour reproduction in photography and came upon Land’s work on the additive properties of coloured light. Land claimed to be able to produce the whole range of spectral colours by red and green filters alone. This and a work of his own, Colour Radiation (1959), in which coloured lines at acute angles overlap parallel lines, led him to experiment with colour radiation and reflected

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Induccion del Amarillo Tataito – Cruz-Diez 2012

Carlos Cruz Diez

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colour and also to investigate the phenomena of interference and moire effects produced by frames.

Cruz-Diez started his experiments with red and green strips of card at right angles to the surface of the picture seeking the optimum interval between them which would transform these basic colours into the spectral colour by radiation and reflection. From these experiments resulted the first “Physichromie’. He had begun to paint with light instead of pigment. He says of Physichromie no. 3, “The solution I found with more plastic possibilities for making the most of colour reflection, was that of constructing a surface made of parallel blades spaced regularly. The slant of these blades controls the admission of light. The result thus obtained is that of a changing chromatic atmosphere and not that of plain colour simply painted on with a brush.”

Since I959 Cruz-Diez has been exploring the possibilities of his discovery. In 1962 he began to use what he called the ‘open palette’, that is, other colours besides red and green, and in the same year he introduced background shapes, mostly circles and squares, with clearly defined contours (hitherto they had been rather amorphous and ill-defined, if present at all) which appear and disappear with the movement of the spectator. The next significant developments took place in 1964 when transparent ‘blades’ were used. They created an entirely different chromatic atmosphere. This led, in that same year, to a new type of structure, the ‘Interferences’, consisting of a rigid and a mobile, or two rigid planes superimposed on one another.

Both planes were transparent and contained identical structures in different colours and at slightly different angles. When the spectator moves the mobile

Physichromie No. 1580 – Cruz-Diez 2009

Physichromie 1831 – Cruz-Diez 2015

Carlos Cruz Diez

Physichromie 1858 – Cruz-Diez 2013

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Carlos Cruz Diez

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plane, or moves in front of the rigid planes, an extraordinary variety of subtle colours and tones appear.

Cruz-Diez says about his’ work: “The principle of experimentation has always guided my work. All my works are based on experiments in Physics but these experiments are valuable to me only in so far as they help to create a plastic object, a visual event. I have deliberately not referred to ‘expression’, because I think that no one is interested in my expression but only in the plastic object that I may create.”

His most recent experiments are, like Soto’s, in the direction of an environmental art. These may take the form of more than man-size transparent coloured screens which filter the light and both change in colour and transform the colour of the surroundings (‘Transchromies’ 1968). There is a noticeable change in his use of colour which has become harsher and more dissonant. His latest environmental works, ‘Chromosaturations’, create a total environment. They consist either of plastic strips in complementary colours suspended from the ceiling and arranged in a circle (like a shower-bath), just large enough to envelop a single person; or of a succession of three small rooms interconnected and flooded with blue, red and green light (in that order), through which the spectator passes (‘Habitacles of Pure Colour’). In the first of these the spectator experiences a world of simultaneous contrast; in the second, a world of successive and mixed contrast. ‘Art’, says CruzDiez, “ought to satisfy the immediate needs of man.

We five in a world in which each of us is in a constant state of balance between the gregarious and the intimate. It is a matter of creating works which

Cromointerferencia Espacial 23 – Cruz-Diez 2015

Carlos Cruz Diez

Physichromie 1604 – Cruz-Diez 2009

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Carlos Cruz Diez

correspond to these two situations . . . which give us a rest from collectivity when we need it (hence my individual works) or which cure us of loneliness when we no longer want it . . . At the same time art passes from the figurative to the experienced, from the imaginary to the happening (I’evenement).”

Induccion Circular Antonella 1 – Cruz-Diez 2011

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Physichromie No. 1020 – Cruz-Diez 1975

Couleur A L’Espace Ariel 1 – Cruz-Diez 2011

Carlos Cruz Diez

Color Aditivo Betzaida B1 – Cruz-Diez 2016

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Carlos Cruz Diez

Induction du Jaune 202 – Cruz Diez 2016

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Carlos Cruz Diez

Caura 4 – Cruz Diez 2015

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Carlos Cruz Diez

Color Aditivo Serie Caracas D1 – Cruz Diez 2010

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Carlos Cruz Diez

Induccion Cromatica a Doble Frecuencia Panam 10 – Cruz Diez 2011

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Carlos Cruz Diez

Inducction Chromatique Serie Jorge Antonio B – Cruz Diez 2011

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Carlos Cruz Diez

PHYSICHROMIE 1935 – Cruz Diez 2014

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Carlos Cruz Diez

Physichromie Panam 141 – Cruz Diez 2013

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Carlos Cruz Diez

Inducción Cromática Sicardi B – Cruz Diez 2014

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Carlos Cruz Diez

BRIDGET RILEY

(John) Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith, bromide print, circa 1970 11 3/4 in. x 9 3/4 in.

OP ART

Bridget Riley was born in London in 1931 and studied at Goldsmiths College (1949—52) and the Royal College of Art (1952—5). But one of her most formative experiences occurred when she was teaching art at a secondary school (1957—8).

She discovered that the more she limited the tasks she set her pupils, the more individual and inventive were the results. Her own art was to become a perfect example of this principle. While working for an advertising agency and at the same time searching for direction in her art, she met Harry Thubron at his exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1958. She found her ideas closest to his and attended his summer course in 1959.

There she met Maurice de Sausmarez who encouraged her interest in Seurat (she had been practicing a pointillist technique since 1957). About this time she produced Pink Landscape (1958-9, plate 63).

This painting was of enormous importance for her subsequent development. With its pointillist technique it could, if greatly enlarged, have become an Op painting. But, more importantly, it was Bridget Riley’s first attempt to convey a visual equivalence of energy—in this case, heat. The picture was based on a view of a huge plain somewhere in Italy.

“The heat off the plain was quite incredible—it shattered . . . the topographical structure of it and set up violent colour vibrations, and to articulate that experience it was only possible to fire it off again in optically vibrant relationships of colour units . . . the local colour was unimportant—the important thing was to bring about an equivalent shimmering sensation on the canvas.”

During the next two years she did two ‘field-paintings’, but it was not the field or fig-

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Circular Movement – Bridget Riley 1962

Between the Two – Bridget Riley 2005

Bridget Riley

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ure-ground relationship which interested her so much as what she calls the ‘bleep’ between the shapes, as in Kiss (1961).

In 1961 she produced her first optical work, Movement in Squares. It consists of black and white squares progressively distorted towards the centre of the picture, thus producing a warping and buckling movement, a disequilibrium which continually readjusts itself and does not fall apart. With this picture she had found her direction.

She describes her method of work as ‘additive’ rather than ‘reductive’ (a method which is practiced by most Op artists and many others besides).

I believe more and more that, after nearly fifty years of ‘reductive’ aesthetics we have reached a point now when the real challenge is how to work ‘additively’; the old principle ‘less is more’ has become a completely academic rule.

She takes a basic unit (square, triangle or cu’cle) and ‘paces’ it (puts it through its paces), pushing it as far as it will go without losing its identity. We have seen this happening in the case of the square (Movement in Squares) and a triangle (Straight Curve, 1963 above). In Fission (1962-3) black circles are ‘paced’ through the oval until they become straight lines (or circles viewed end-on?). She finds the circle the least flexible and most restrictive of all forms.

Experience tells her how a given shape is likely to behave but she never jumps to conclusions; there is always something different in the demands she makes. Her method is always empirical. Since she began to work with colour she has even found it necessary to make full-sale cartoons because the behaviour of the elements on the large-scale cannot always be predicted from sketches. Once she tried

Bagatelle 1 – Bridget Riley 2015

Bagatelle 2 – Bridget Riley 2015

Bridget Riley

Splice – Bridget Riley 1975

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Bridget Riley

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to develop a series of ideas purely conceptually, but though as a mathematical structure it was exhilarating, it was inapplicable to any visual situation: “I just set off mentally building up this structure. Later I tried to find the actual physical situation in’ which this perfect thing that I had built up intellectually would work . . . I just could not make it visible. It had been conceived and developed independently of vision. I finally concluded that it had never been visual in my terms at all.”

Although her work may give the impression of a logical progress, it is exploratory in the way described by Fangor. As she says, she has no definite idea of the goal, though she knows when she is going wrong ‘like a child playing with a hoop . . . Although you don’t know exactly where you are going, if the hoop . . . careers wildly off at a tangent, you know perfectly well that’s not right.’ Edward Lucie-Smith says that Bridget Riley’s preliminary sketches are more finished than many other artists’ finished work, but there is still, even in her case, a world of difference between the two. Apart from scale, the finished work is not always based on any one preliminary sketch. They are experiments which may be combined with others and in any case will be trans- formed in the finished work.

Indeed the finished work, or at least the cartoon (the actual painting may be done by assistants), is often itself experimental.

In calling them experimental there is no implication of scientific experiment. Bridget Riley is not interested in the psychological or physiological effects as such. She is even surprised when people complain that they make an almost painful assault on the eye. She has no intention of being aggressive either. She is prepared to admit, however, that

La Lune en Rodage - Carlo Belloli – Bridget Riley 1965

Wave - Carlo Belloli – Bridget Riley 1975

Bridget Riley

Straight Curve – Bridget Riley 1963

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Bridget Riley

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the most ‘aggressive’ pictures done in 1961-2 may reflect some inner conflict within herself which has since been resolved. This in itself is interesting in view of the accusation of being ‘depersonalized’ (the ‘twentieth-century bogey’, as she calls it) which is often leveled against this kind of art. As she says, ‘to develop as much objectivity as I can is simply counter—balancing this inevitable presence of myself in the work.’ In so far as she has any particular preoccupation—apart from making a picture which is visually satisfactory, which hangs together—it is with the visual equivalence of energy and not with psychology.

A last general remark must be made on her concept of space. She considers it more American than English, that is, the sort of open, shallow, non-focal space which originated with Mondrian and was first completely articulated by Pollock. But she also wants ‘a fluctuating’ surface—an active space which, as she says, ‘operates like the action of a whip’.

From 1961 till’ 1965 she worked in black and white for greater precision, clarity and sharpness of contrast. She worked not only with the geometrical units already considered—square, triangle, circle— but also with lines, at first horizontal and straight (Horizontal Vibration, 1961; Serif, 1964), later with undulating and vertical lines (Fall, 1963; Current, 1964). The movement in these early works was gentle. It became more violent in 1962 with the ‘Blaze’ series and the ‘Disfigured Circle’ series of 1963. But by 1963 a somewhat gentler note was creeping in with Twist and Fall, both vertical, the latter curvilinear— the curve was suggested in’ Straight Curve of the same year.

Colour was introduced first as a contrast of undu-

Magenta and Green – Bridget Riley 2002

Bridget Riley

Nineteen Greys B – Bridget Riley 1968

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Bridget Riley

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lating horizontal bands of warm and cold greys, that is, greys mixed with warm or cold colours, as in the ‘Arrest’ series in 1965. Colour plays a more important role in Deny of the following year, though this was mainly concerned with colour in relation to different tonal values of grey. Black and white was not immediately abandoned for in that year, 1966, she made Static and One (alternate black and white vertical, spear-like triangles). Direct colour contrasts, which began with deeply undulating bands (Cataract, 1967), presented new problems. At first she worked with just two contrasting colours, still with tonal variations. Gradually the tonal variations were eliminated (Chant, 1968) and other colours added (Late Morning, 1968). With the use of tonally equal colour went a return to very simple structures—vertical straight lines— but in her most recent work structural complexity is returning— the diagonal, in the hot, oriental (Orange, Violet, Green Elongated, 1969), and the elongated triangle (Green and Magenta Diagonals, 1969).

Bridget Riley’s art has developed with an assurance, a relentlessness even, which is rare in the history of painting. As Edward Lucie-Smith wrote in The Times when she was awarded the prize at the Venice Biennale in 1968: “There can be few modern artists who have moved more logically from one phase to another without giving the impression that the work they are currently engaged upon is in some way incomplete . . . There never seems to have been a phase of her career when she felt at a loss as to where to go next.”

Magenta and Blue – Bridget Riley 2002

Bridget Riley

Rose, Rose – Bridget Riley 2011

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Bridget Riley

Coloured Greys [2] – Bridget Riley 1972

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Bridget Riley

Coloured Greys [3] – Bridget Riley 1972

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Bridget Riley

Straight Curve – Bridget Riley 1963

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Bridget Riley

Sideways – Bridget Riley 2010

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Bridget Riley

One Small Step – Bridget Riley 2009

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Bridget Riley

Standing Up, Turning Round, Lying Down – Bridget Riley 2015

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Bridget Riley

JEFFREY STEELE

Anthea Sieveking, bromide print, 1960s 16 1/8 in. x 12 in.

OP ART

Jeffrey Steele, a year younger than Sedgley, studied at Cardiff and Newport Colleges of Art. Like the other British Op painters he was impressed by the ‘heroic confrontation with the universally felt angst through the use of Dionysiac gesture and pigment on a large scale’ which characterized the American Abstract Expressionism at the Tate exhibition. But he ‘mistrusted the by-passing of the thinking part of the mind which gestural painting entails’. Some love of the philosophical method of Descartes, he tells us, predisposed him towards a more rational and austere form in the tradition of Suprematism and Neo-Plasticism. But until he went to Paris on a scholarship in 1959, he found no satisfactory development out of the work of these pioneers.

There he came in contact with the works of Albers, Max Bill, Herbin, Lohse, Vasarely, and Soto.

‘I definitely resolved to proceed from then on by controlled and logical experimentation.’ While still in Paris, in 1960, he made his first black and white Op paintings. Being soon forced to return to Cardiff he was able to work out his own ideas without the harassing awareness of other artists’ solutions to the same problem. We so many other Op painters, he stumbled on Op rather than consciously pursued it, and at the time was unaware that other artists, both in his own country and abroad were working towards the same conclusions. Once having discovered it, he set about exploiting it: “Realizing that the observation of any given object entails a complex range of involuntary movements in the perceptive mechanism until’ recognition or identification is achieved, I began to try, in paintings, to balance numerous possibilities for appraisal in order to block this final resolution, thus bringing the spectator’s optical dynamism into play . . . as

Peziza – Jeffrey Steele 1965

Jeffrey Steele

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in ju-jitsu one’s opponent’s strength is used against him.”

He reduces his material to a mathematically coherent relationship. He works within a system, as Lohse does, and like Lohse (unlike, say, Mortensen) he does not depart from it—‘If you alter the picture you may have a nicer picture. If you modify the system you establish a principle on which you can build.’ But, though the execution of the picture, once a system has been chosen, is a logical process, the choice of system is spontaneous and intuitive.

Moreover, he never knows how the finished picture is going to look. There is always a sense of a leap into the void, and, in spite of his systematic approach, he also feels obliged to work by hand.

He envisages a computerized art which will translate two-dimensional ideas into three-dimensional and architectural structures, and even into sound, but he does not see any immediate prospect of its realization. The computerized versions made of his Baroque Experiment (1964) are an impoverishment of the original idea. He is also fascinated by the idea of stretching an image a mile long without altering its height so that it can be seen by people passing in a tram, but so far he has made only one large billboard painting which may be seen outside Cardiff Station.

Steele is perhaps the most ‘continental’ of British Op artists, and he was until recently, the only Op artist to confine himself to black and white.

One of the outstanding features of his work is its luminosity, and these two features seem connected: “I have worked only in lack and white because of use of colour would interfere with the factors of light and movement which hold my interest.”

Steele’s development, like his art, has been sys-

Hecuba – Jeffrey Steele 1931

Jeffrey Steele

Syntagma, Sg IV 75 – Jeffrey Steele 1975

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Jeffrey Steele

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tematic and methodical, growing in complexity as simpler problems are solved. The earliest were continuous or broken lines often with tile enough optical movement (Orland 1960). These were followed in 1961 by simple structures of black and white squares and circles, and those staccato lines caused by periodically indenting slightly diagonal lines as they cross the vertical (Gespenstliche Gestalt and 3rd July, 1961). Complexity increased when the enclosing staccato lines generated secondary squares (Divertissement and Lavolta, 1965) and created a luminous centre or luminous axes.

In 1965 straight lines gave way to curves which became increasingly convoluted, with greater movement in’ depth (Mock Valentine and Sub Rosa, 1966 and Ilmater, 1966—7). With the increased complexity the luminous quality became more subtle: light seemed interwoven with the structure (Eleusis, 1966). Gradually the somewhat rigid geometrical structure was replaced by plaited strands of undulating lines. In his most recent paintings Steele has introduced colour contrasts and the undulating lines have been broken up and the units reversed.

It is Steele’s present aim to have things both ways: to give the spectator successively an impression of optical movement and of a pattern on a plane surface. This has always been his aim to some extent: he never really wanted to allow the optical effect to disturb the surface pattern.

Sg III 103 – Jeffrey Steele 1988

Eleusis – Jeffrey Steele 1966

Jeffrey Steele

Poudreux – Jeffrey Steele 1970

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Jeffrey Steele

Sub Rosa – Jeffrey Steele 1966

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Jeffrey Steele

Unterhaltung – Jeffrey Steele 1965

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Jeffrey Steele

Five Rows of Seven Squares in Cinematic Rotation – Jeffrey Steele 1960

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Jeffrey Steele

Triangulation – Jeffrey Steele 1960

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Jeffrey Steele

Sine Wave Composition – Jeffrey Steele 1972

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Jeffrey Steele

Structural Metamorphosis of a Theme by Kenneth Martin No 2 – Jeffrey Steele 1971

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Jeffrey Steele

Intersecting Rhythms 1 – Jeffrey Steele 1962

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Jeffrey Steele

Gespenstische Gestalt – Jeffrey Steele 1963

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Jeffrey Steele

EXHIBITION HISTORIES

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VICTOR VASARELY Victor Vasarely: Paintings and Collages

Arts Club of Chicago

1966

Peintures récentes

Rive Gauche, Paris

1966

Serigrafieën

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

1967

Victory Vasarely – Graphics

Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art

1969

Victor Vasarely - Arbeiten von 19331980

Galerie Heinz Holtmann

1980

Vasarely - Erfinder der Op-art

Kunstverein Wolfsburg

1998

Ornament und Abstraktion

Fondation Beyeler

2001

Light and Movement of the Century Abstract Art

Gallery Hyundai, Seoul

2001

Transparences

Galerie Lélia Mordoch

2002

Good vibrations: the legacy of Op Art in Australia

Heide Museum of Modern Art

2002

Zero

Sammlung Lenz Schönberg

2003

Klassische Moderne bis Minimal

Galerie der Stadt Sindelfingen

2004

Inventur III

Galerie Keim

2005

The Absolute Eye

Herakleidon Museum

2005

Totally Geometric - Abstraction from the permanent Collection

Neuberger Museum of Art

2005

The Expanded Eye. Sehen

Kunsthaus Zürich

2006

Op Art Revisited - Selections from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery

San Jose Museum of Art

2007

OP ART

PETER SEDGLEY Seven 64

McRoberts and Tunnard Gallery

1964

Galerie Onnasch

Nantgenshi Gallery, Tokyo

1969

Human Presence

Camden Arts Centre

1970

Britanniasta 75

Alvar Aalto-Museo, Tampere

1975

Künstlerbund Exhibition

Nationalgalerie, Berlin

1976

New Extensions Exhibition

Tate Gallery, London

1979

Kelpra Studios Graphics

Tate Gallery, London

1980

Spielraum-Raumspiel

Alte Oper, Frankfurt

1982

Sixties Art Scene in London

Chelsea Arts Club, London

1993

Charged Light

Royal Academy, Stockholm

1998

Light and Visual Text

Erfurt & Weimar

1999

Galerie Ann Westin

Stockholm

1990

Czech Museum of Fine Arts

Prague

2000

Traces du sacré

Centre Pompidou, Paris

2008

OP ART

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JESUS RAFAEL SOTO

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Taller Libre de Arte, Caracas

Caracas,Venezuela

1949

Galerie Denise René

Paris, France

1956

Museo de Bellas Artes, Carcas

Bogotá, Colombia

1964

Akron Art Center

Akron, Ohio

1971

Museo de Arte Moderno

Bogotá, Colombia

1972

Museo de Bellas Artes

Buenos Aires, Argentina

1992

Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia

Salvador, Brazil

1992

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MARCO)

Monterrey, Mexico

2000

Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá

Colombia

2001

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas

Venezuela

2003

Jesús-Rafael Soto

Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX

2004

Visión en Movimiento

Mexico City, Mexico

2005

Virtualidad Vibrante

Caracas, Venezuela

2006

Soto: Les harmonies combinatoires

Paris, France

2010

Soto dans le collection du Museé national d’art moderne

Paris, France

2013

Jesús-Rafael Soto: The Houston Penetrable

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), Houston, TX

2014

Soto: Chronochrome

New York

2015

OP ART

CARLOS CRUZ DIEZ Physichromies de Cruz-Diez: Oeuvres de 1954 à 1965

Galerie Kerchache, Paris, France

1965

Cordoba Has III Bienal Interamericana de Arte

Cordoba, Argentina

1966

Physichromies, Couleur Additive, Induction Chromatique, Chromointerferences

Galerie Denise René, New York

1971

Venezuelan Art Show

Galeria Venezuela, New York

1980

Geometric Abstraction: Latin American Art

Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge

2001

Geométriques et cinétiques

Galerie Lavigne Bastille, Paris

2002

Couleur événement

Galerie Lavignes Bastille, Paris

2004

Carlos Cruz-Diez: (In)formed by Color

Americas Society, New York

2008

Cruz-Diez, 50 ans de recherche

Galerie Lavigne Bastille, Paris

2009

Circumstance and Ambiguity of Color

Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York

2013

Carlos Cruz-Diez in Black & White

New York

2014

Evolving Color

Louis Stern Fine Arts, West Hollywood

2014

Transfiguration de la couleur

Marlborough Gallery, Monaco

2015

Chromatic Transfiguration

Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York

2015

Light Show

Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia

2015

Didaktik und dialektik der farbe

Kleine Museum, Weißenstadt, Germany

2015

OP ART

133

BRIDGET RILEY

134

Summer Group Show

85 Charlotte Street

1992

Works on Paper 1980–92

85 Charlotte Street

1992

Five Works

85 Charlotte Street

1993

Colour Studies 1990–93

85 Charlotte Street

1993

Three New Paintings

41/42 Foley Street

1994

Group Show

41/42 Foley Street

1994

From Here

41/42 Foley Street

1995

Summer Group Show

41/42 Foley Street

1995

Recent Paintings and Gouaches

41/42 Foley Street

1996

Colour Studies for ‘Late Morning II’ and ‘Gala’ 1967–73

41/42 Foley Street

1997

Bridget Riley: Black & White

47 Lexington Street

2001

Agnes Martin, Bridget Riley, Rosemarie Trockel

47 Lexington Street

2003

Carl Andre, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Sol LeWitt, Bridget Riley

5-8 Lower John Street

2008

Fragments 1965

5-8 Lower John Street

2010

The Stripe Paintings 1961-2014

London

2014

Art Cologne 2015

Koelnmesse, Cologne

2015

Frieze Masters 2015

Regent’s Park, London

2015

OP ART

JEFFREY STEELE Young Contemporaries

International Association (AIA), London

1961

Four Young Contemporaries

Paris Gallery, London

1961

Abstract Variations II

Paris Gallery, London

1961

Lithographs, Drawings and Little Paintings

Paris Gallery, London

1961

Geometric Variations

Paris Gallery, London

1962

The Geometric Environment

AIA, London

1962

John Moores Liverpool Exhibition

Walker Gallery, Liverpool

1963

Twelve Artists

Qantas Gallery, London

1963

Paintings of Sensibilité

Paris Gallery, London

1963

Contemporary Art Society for Wales

National Museum, Cardiff

1963

Seven ’64

McRoberts & Tunnard, London

1964

September International

Grosvenor Gallery, London

1964

The Responsive Eye

Museum of Modern Art, New York

1965

Movements

City Art Gallery, Manchester

1965

Trends and Trendsetters

Howard Roberts Gallery, Cardiff, Wales

1965

Summer Exhibition

Redfern Gallery, London

1965

Kinetic Art

Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry and Ulster Museum, Belfast

1966

Form and Image

Leeds Institute, Leeds

1966

London Under Forty

Galleria Milano, Milan

1966

Ten ’66

McRoberts & Tunnard, London

1966

OP ART

135

LIST OF WORKS

136

VICTOR VASARELY Cassiopee II

Acrylic on canvas 195 × 130 cm

1958

L’Echiquier

Oil on board 61 x 41 cm

1935

Zebra

Oil on board 36 x 20 cm

1938

Keple Gestalt

Acrylic on canvas 160 x160 cm

1968

Vega-Noir

Acrylic on Canvas 200 x 200 cm

1969

Vega

Acrylic on canvas 195 x 130 cm

1957

Bora III

Oil on canvas 149 x 141 cm

1964

Vonal Stri

Acrylic on canvas 200 x 200 cm

1975

Eridan II

Oil on board 37 x 25 cm

1956

Tekers-MC

Acrylic on canvas 235 x 201 cm

1981

Gestalt Sin

Acrylic on canvas 180 x 172 cm

1969

EG 1-2

Acrylic on panel 50 x 50 cm

1965

Stèle

Wood multiple, painted in colors

1988

Infin

Acrylic on canvas 200 x 2000 cm

1988

Stèle

Wood multiple, painted in colors

1988

Micron

Acrylic on canvas 180 x 180 cm

1984

Tuz-Tuz

Screenprint in colors on wove paper 90 x 45 cm

1976

EPULL

Acrylic on canvas 102 x 103 cm

1970

Quasar-Kek

Acrylic on canvas 160 x 160 cm

1971

Phobos

Acrylic on canvas 160 x 160 cm

1971

Bianco

Acrylic on canvas 132 x 132 cm

1987

Vilag

Screenprint in colors 60 x 60 cm

1978

OP ART

PETER SEDGLEY Glide

Acrylic on canvas 91 x 91 cm

1965

Target Dive

Acrylic on canvas 183 x 183 cm

1966

Target Dive

Acrylic on canvas

1970

Blue Pulse

Acrylic on canvas

1972

Warbel

Acrylic on canvas

1971

Glow

Acrylic on canvas

1930

Yellow Circle

Acrylic on canvas

1930

Colour Cycle III

Acrylic on canvas

1970

Yellow Attenenuation

Acrylic on canvas

1965

Cycle

Acrylic on canvas

1965

Oranges and Lemons

Acrylic on canvas

1980

137

OP ART

JESUS RAFAEL SOTO

138

Ovalo Rojo

Screenprint on Arches 56 × 76 × 0.3 cm

1980

Ovalo Verde

Screenprint on Arches 56 × 76 × 0.3 cm

1980

Esfera Theospacio

Plexiglass Structure and painted steel bars 53 × 34 × 40 cm

1989

Paralelas Vibrantes

Silkscreen on Two Acrylic Sheets 44 × 27 × 14 cm

1979

Negro y Azul

Acrylic on wood and metal 70 × 70 × 18 cm

1971

Object Ed

Plexiglass in wood case 32 × 32 × 15 cm

1964

Multiple II

Clear and Yellow Perspex with steel bars 50 × 15 × 15 cm

1969

Purpura Y Plata

Acrylic on aluminium and wood 151 × 102 cm

1969

Cuadrado Negro y Piata

Painted wood, metal rod with nylon strings 82 × 82 cm

1970

Multiple IV

Wood with four square metal sections 50 × 15 × 15 cm

1969

Agnes

Acrylic on wood and metal 83 × 62 cm

1986

Color abajo

Paint on wood and metal 153 × 153 × 17 cm

1991

Maquette De La Sphére Lutetia

Plexiglass Structure and painted steel bars 53 × 34 × 40 cm

1995

Tige Vibrante

Painted Wood, Metal and Nylon 51 × 24 × 15 cm

1967

Ambivalencia Victor

Aluminum on wood 150 × 150 × 15 cm

1961

Cubo y Extensión

Wood and metal 216 × 150 × 150 cm

1971

Gran Marron

Acrylic on wood and metal 160 × 157.5 × 43.2 cm

2003

OP ART

CARLOS CRUZ DIEZ Induccion del Amarillo Tataito

Chromography on paper 120 × 60 cm

2012

Physichromie No. 1580

Pigment chromography, PVC, and aluminum 81 × 160 cm

2009

Physichromie 1831

Aluminum and serigraph on Plexiglas 102 × 152 cm

2015

Physichromie 1858

Chromographie on polycarbonate 100 × 100 cm

2013

Cromointerferencia Espacial 23

Aluminum and serigraph on Plexiglas 152 × 152 cm

2015

Physichromie 1604

Aluminum and serigraph on Plexiglas 102 × 102 cm

2009

Induccion Circular Antonella I

Aluminum and serigraph on Plexiglas 88.9 cm

2011

Physichromie No. 1020

Silkscreen and plastic elements on metal support with aluminum frame 100 × 200 cm

1975

Color Aditivo Betzaida B1

Chromography on aluminum 60 × 60 cm

2016

Induction du Juane 202

Airbrush acrylic paint on aluminium 150 × 150 cm

2016

Caura 4

Lithograph 60 × 70 cm

2015

Color Aditivo Serie Caracas D1

Serigraph on aluminum 81 × 81 cm

2010

Induccion Cromatica a Doble Frecuencia Panam 10

Chromography on Aluminium 180 × 90 cm

2011

Physichromie 1935

Aluminum and serigraph on Plexiglas 100 × 100 cm

2014

Physichromie Panam 141

Chromography on aluminium, plexiglass 60 × 60 cm

2013

Inducción Cromática Sicardi B

Chromography on aluminum 120 × 120 cm

2014

OP ART

139

BRIDGET RILEY

140

Circular Movement

Screenprint 27 × 27 cm

1962

Between the Two

Screenprint 49 × 91 cm

2005

Bagatelle I

Screenprint 52 × 82 cm

2015

Bagatelle 2

Screenprint 52 × 82 cm

2015

Splice

Screenprint in colours 75 × 54 cm

1975

La Lune en Rodage

Screenprint 32 × 32 cm

1965

Wave

Screenprint on paper 20 × 48 cm

1975

Straight Curve

Acrylic on board 71 × 61 cm

1963

Magenta and Green

Screenprint 109 × 75 cm

2002

Nineteen Greys B

Screenprint in colors, on card, the full sheet 75.6 × 74.9 cm

1968

Magenta and Blue

Screenprint 109 × 75 cm

2002

Rose, Rose

Screenprint 87 × 70 cm

2011

Coloured Greys [2]

Screenprint 74 × 70 cm

1972

Coloured Greys [3]

Screenprint 74 × 70 cm

1972

Straight Curve

Acrylic on board 71 × 61 cm

1963

Sideways

Screenprint 46 × 32 cm

2010

One Small Step

Screenprint 44 × 29 cm

2009

Standing Up, Turning Round, Lying Down

Screenprint 95 × 76 cm

2015

OP ART

JEFFREY STEELE Peziza

Acrylic on canvas 90 x 120 cm

1965

Hecuba

Oil on canvas 101 x 76 cm

1931

Sytagma, Sg IV 75

Oil on canvas 122 x 163 cm

1975

Sg III 103

Oil on canvas 152 x 152 cm

1988

Eleusis

Oil on canvas 152 x 213 cm

1966

Poudreux

Oil & acrylic on canvas 110 x 141 cm

1970

Sub Rosa

Oil on canvas 122 x 91 cm

1966

Unterhaltung

Screenprint 173 x 173 cm

1965

Five Rows of Seven Squares in Cinematic Rotation

Tempera on paper 25 x 36 cm

1960

Triangulation

Oil on canvas 71 x 53 cm

1960

Sine Wave Composition

Oil on linen, 22 x 22 cm

1972

Structural Metamorphosis of a Theme by Kenneth Marin No. 2

Link on paper 64 x 64 cm

1971

Intersecting Rhythms I

Oil on canvas 61 x 76 cm

1962

Gespenstische Gestalt

Oil on canvas 68 x 9 cm

1963

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