Optical games – but not for sore eyes!

Today’s post will challenge our vision. Thank you very much to Susanne Pearce for her thoughts on helping us see more.

Susanne writes: To look at this work is to be dazzled and discombobulated.  It is impossible to focus on it. As you stare and your eye shifts imperceptibly, the image seems to pulsate. The NGV showed this contemporary Op Art work among many other examples in the exhibition Kaleidoscopic Turn in 2015. https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/the-kaleidoscopic-turn/

Op Art refers to paintings and sculptures which exploit illusions or optical effects resulting from perceptual processes – the way the eye takes in and the mind processes what it sees. The term ‘Op Art’ was coined by Donald Judd in 1964. 

MoMA held the first major exhibition of Op Art works, The Responsive Eye, in 1965, (although artists had worked in this way for many years). It consisted of more than 125 paintings and constructions by 75 artists from 10 countries.  The press release https://www.moma.org/search?query=responsive+eye stated: “the exhibition will bring together paintings and constructions that initiate a new, highly perceptual phase in the grammar of art.  Using only lines, bands and patterns, flat areas of colour, white, grey or black, ……… the artists establish a totally new relationship between the observer and a work of art.”

William Seitz (exhibition director) said that “these works exist less as objects to be examined than as generators of perceptual responses …………  These new kinds of subjective experiences…..are entirely real to the eye even though they do not exist physically in the work itself.”

Bridget Riley was one of the leading exponents of Op Art in the 1960s in Britain.  The NGV has four of Riley’s paintings, four silkscreens and two studies. Opening is a classic example of the Op Art movement’s conceptual principles: the engagement of the viewer’s eye in a series of visual connections counterpointing each other in a dynamic flow.  There is a simple basis to its construction but it is visually difficult to grasp. The shifting proportions of black and white create vibrating contrasts which dazzle the eye and confuse the mind.

Riley is an excellent example of artists in the European stream of the Op Art movement who tended to work with lines, patterns and geometric shapes to give illusory effects. Diverse ideas were drawn from late 19C colour theory, the neo-impressionist, early 20C Russian constructivism, design and patterning of the German Bauhaus between the war and more.  American artists tended to draw more on abstract expressionism and colour field painting.

While there are links to psychological and physiological research artists did not approach Op Art in a scientific way but rather used intuitive starting points which could be expanded upon.

The NGV has nine works by Victor Vasarely, who is sometimes referred to as the grandfather of Op Art.  His first work in this style, The Chess Board, was created as early as 1935.   In the 1950s he patented a compositional system known as Planetary Folklore which consisted of a series of standardised circles, squares, rhomboids and ellipses in various colours which could be combined in a huge number of permutations.

Some artists worked in three dimensions.  Jesus Soto’s London Scribblings is an excellent example.  Soto plays with the traditional boundaries between painting and sculpture in his experimentation with optics and the representation of energy.  Against a background of black and white stripes, black twisted wires protrude and are suspended.  They can be clearly seen from the side, almost as an independent sculpture surrounded by space.  From frontal positions, as the viewer moves, vibrant patterns and dazzling moire effects are perceived.  It is difficult to differentiate between the real and the illusionary movement of the wires.

Another artist who often works in 3-D is the Australian artist, Sandra Selig. She is interested in exploring concepts of intangibility, of discrepancies between the actual and the perceived and of the transformation and perception of space. This large, complex thread installation is an excellent example. Its appearance shifts as the viewer moves around.

Other artists to look for in the  NGV’s collection are:  Stanislaus Ostoja-Kotkowski, Anne-Marie May, Martha Botho, Tomislav Nikolic, Olafur Elisson, David Harley, and Joseph Albers.

While contemporary artists continue to use paint , pencil, printmaking as those in the 50s,60s and 70s, many have chosen to use the technologies of their own time in exploring the nature of perception eg.  projected light, laser optics, computer graphics as well as plastics and other new materials. 

Many critics in the 1960s were very critical and sceptical of Op Art, seeing such works as gimmicks and a fleeting trend.  Certainly their graphic patterns were appropriated and commercialised in the fashion and design industries (and still are).  But Op Art radically altered the relationship between the artwork and the viewer’s perception of it and it continues to have an impact today.

Thank you, Susanne, for such an illuminating article. I have added a picture of Susanne in front of her own work, taken at the Glasshouse Reflections art show in November 2018.