Op-Art by Mike Antenucci

"Optical art is a method of painting concerning the interaction between illusion and picture plane, between understanding and seeing." Op art works are abstract, with many of the better known works are in black and white. When the viewer looks at them, the impression is given of movement, hidden images, flashing and vibration, patterns, swelling or warping.

In October 1964, an article describing this new style of art, Time Magazine coined the phrase "Optical Art" or "Op Art". This term referenced the fact that Op Art is composed of illusion, and often appears to the viewer to be moving or breathing due to its exact, mathematically based layout.

Pause - Bridget Riley 1964 - Emulsion on board 115.5x116

Op art takes advantage of the functional relationship between the eye's retina and the brain. Certain patterns cause confusion between these two organs, resulting in the perception of irrational optical effects. To me this is what is so impressive. I chose to write about op art because of the tricks it plays on the human mind. It is still a mystery to me how someone can picture this artwork in their head before they draw it.

Typically, Op artists used only black and white in order to produce the greatest contrast in their designs, since this contrast causes the greatest confusion for the eye. The reason for this is it’s hard to tell what element of the composition is in the foreground and which in the background. Some artists choose to use color as a focus of attention at times, as in Vasarely's Plastic Alphabet series (1960-1980). The ways in which color suggests space and the ways colors contrast with one another, proved fertile areas for experiment.

Although becoming relatively mainstream, photographers have been slow to produce op art. In painting, Victor Vasarely and Bridget Riley were producing large amounts of art and the same can be said for many digital artists, such as Kitaoka. One of the primary reasons for the lack of photographers doing op art, is the difficulty in finding effective subject matter. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, however, produced photographic op art and taught the subject in the Bauhaus. One of his lessons consisted of making his students produce holes in cards and then photographing them.

Victor Vasarely is widely regarded as the father of Op-Art. The other artist I will be talking about is Bridget Louise Riley; an English painter who is one of the foremost proponents of Op art. She currently lives and works in London, Cornwall, and France.

Vasarely is a master of 20th century art for his advancements he made early in the 1900s. His paintings are in the permanent collections of many important museums around the world. Vasarely is quoted talking about his idea about the meeting point between arts and science “the two creative expressions of man, art and science, meet again to form an imaginary construct that is in accord with our sensibility and contemporary knowledge”.

Etudes Bauhaus C - Victor Vasarely 1929 Oil on board 23x23cm

Vasarely was born in Pecs and grew up in Piestany and Budapest where in 1925 he took up medical studies at Budapest University. In 1927 Vasarely made a radical and life decision he decided to suspend his studies in medicine and change direction completely. He decided to pursue a career in art. These years studying medicine were not wasted though his scientific background and training provided him with a strong sense of scientific method and objectivity. This background was an extremely important throughout his artistic career in defining his style.

In 1929, he enrolled in Muhely, this is known as the Bauhaus of Budapest. Founded by Alexander Bortnyik and modeled on the Bauhaus of Dessau, lessons were taught on the artists such as Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Josef Albers. The result of Bauhaus teachings on Vasarely’s lifetime of work would turn out to be considerable. In this same year he discovered Abstract art and was introduced to constructivism. This is when he produced his famous “Etude bleue” and “Etude verte”. Vasarely supported theories which promote art that is less individualistic and more collective, meaning art which adapts to the changing modern world and industry.

Autoportrait - Victor Vasarely 1934 Pastel on paper 56x36cm

Under the pressure of the Hungarian government at the time, Vasarely and his coworkers left Hungary and settled in Paris in 1930. After this oppression he began working as a designer and creative artist at the Havas advertising agency and at Draeger's, a renowned printer of the time. His graphic work in these agencies and later in Dewambez, allowed him to approach the world of design.

In 1943, Vasarely began to work extensively in oils, creating both abstract and figurative canvases. His first Parisian exhibition was the following year at the Galerie Denise Rene which he helped found. Vasarely became the recognized leader of the avant garde group of artists affiliated with the gallery.

A major change in Vasarely’s style came about after his first important exhibition of graphics and drawings at the Denise Rene Gallery in 1944. The exhibition was a critical success, and Vasarely made the decision to devote himself to painting. During this time in his career, Vasarely had become aware of the work of the abstract painters Auguste Herbin, Piet Mondrian and the architect and painter le Corbusier. The ideas of these artists had a significant impact on Vasarely and by 1945 he was fully committed to abstract painting.

Victor Vasarely’s work was included in three important exhibitions in Paris “Salon de Surindependants” 1945 & 1946, “Salon de Realites Nouvelles” 1947 and again at the Denise Rene Gallery 1948 in an exhibition called “Tendances de l’Art Abstrait”.

In 1947, Vasarely discovered his place in abstract art. Influenced by his experiences at Breton Beach of Belle Isle, he concluded that "internal geometry" could be seen below the surface of the entire world. He was conceived that form and color are inseparable. Quote by Vasarely "Every form is a base for color, every color is the attribute of a form." Forms from natural elements were turned into purely abstract art in his paintings. Understanding the inner mechanics of nature, Vasarely wrote, "the ellipsoid form...will slowly, but tenaciously, take hold of the surface, and become its raison d'etre. Henceforth, this ovoid form will signify in all my works of this period, the 'oceanic feeling'...I can no longer admit an inner world and another, an outer world, apart. The within and the without communicate by osmosis, or, one might rather say: the spatial-material universe, energetic-living, feeling-thinking, form a whole, indivisible... The languages of the spirit are but the super vibrations of the great physical nature."

In the early 1950s, Vasarely was using preliminary scale drawings for his works. Vasarely called these programmations. Preliminary scale drawings are drawings done in the early stages of build design. In 1955, Galerie Denise Rene hosted a major group exhibition in connection with Vasarely's painting experiments with movement. This was the first important exhibition of kinetic art and included works by Yaacov Agam, Pol Bury, Soto, and Jean Tinguely, among others

Vasarely developed his own color system that would create new linear forms and shapes. This was his artistic ‘alphabet’. He would then try out this alphabet on a ‘program’ before embarking on a new series. Initially Vasarely created the actual works from his programs himself but from 1965 onwards he used assistants and interns.

From the beginning Vasarely was fascinated by technology and saw the early promise of computers for example he insisted that computers be installed at the Vasarely Foundation. Vasarely’s system of his plastic alphabets draws parallels with computer programming and the computer art of today. He was beyond without a doubt far ahead of his time.

Vonal-Stri - Victor Vasarely 1975 Acrylic on canvas 200x200cm

During the 1960’s and 70’s his optical images became part of popular culture. His artwork has a deep impact on architecture, computer science, fashion, even the way we now look at things in general. Vasarely was very modest; he achieved great fame but insisted on making his art accessible to everyone. His motto was “Art for all”. The art he created was experiments on your perception that transformed the flat surface into a world of motion and movement.

In June of 1970, Vasarely opened his first dedicated museum with over 500 works in a renaissance palace in Gordes. This museum was later closed in 1996. A second major undertaking of his was the Foundation Vasarely in Aix-en-Provence, a museum housed in a distinct structure specially designed by Vasarely. It was inaugurated in 1976 by French president Georges Pompidou. The museum is currently falling apart and needs funding, several of the pieces on display have been damaged by water. Also, in 1976 his large kinematic object Georges Pompidou was installed in the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Vasarely Museum located at his birthplace in Pécs, Hungary. This was established with a large donation of works by Vasarely. In 1982 154 specially created serigraphs were taken into space by the cosmonaut Jean-Loup Chrétien on board the French-Soviet spacecraft Salyut 7 and later sold for the benefit of UNESCO. In 1987, the second Hungarian Vasarely museum was established in Zichy Palace in Budapest with more than 400 works.

Vasarely continued to explore depth and movement in his highly structured paintings well into his seventies. These paintings are as exciting and innovative (and were always on the same huge scale) as the works of his earlier years. Victor Vasarely was a man of energy and inventiveness.

In his old age he was heaped with honors. He was made an honorary citizen of New York and in 1990 was promoted (in France) to the rank of Grand Officer de l’Ordre national du Mérite. Vasarely had become a naturalized French citizen in 1959. Vasarely died at age 90 in Paris on March 15th 1997. There is a new Vasarely exhibit being mounted in Paris at Musee en Herbe in 2012.

Tekers-MC - Victor Vasarely 1981 Acrylic on canvas 235x201cm

Vasarely felt that the uniqueness of a work of art and the artist's personal involvement in its execution were ridicules claims. He worked in a manner that lent itself to mass production by modern technical processes. Limiting himself to flat lines, simple geometric shapes, and unmodulated color, Vasarely viewed himself as a "creator" of designs which could be inexpensively produced in the same, enlarged, or reduced scales. This was reflected in his method of conception. Working on graph paper, Vasarely made notations of letters (for the shape to appear in a given graphed square) and numbers (one through 16 to indicate the shade or value of a particular hue or color). By using simple geometric shapes and hues that were modified by his established scale of shades, he or others could produce copies of a design. In this way he produced art which he believed could benefit all of society by being available and affordable.

Nude - Bridget Riley c.1951-52 - Conte and pastel on paper 43x21.2

The second artist I felt influential was Bridget Riley was born in London in 1931. She grew up in Cornwall before returning to London to study art. Before she took up Op art she painted in the pointillist style. She had many influences in her work but was impressed by the works of Jackson Pollock. After working as an art teacher and illustrator she eventually took up art full time in 1963. In 1983 she designed a large mural for the Royal Liverpool Hospital. In the same year she also designed a set for a Ballet called ‘Colour Moves’.

She explores optical phenomena and juxtaposes color either by using a chromatic technique of identifiable hues or by selecting achromatic colors (black, white or gray). In doing so, her work appears to flicker, pulsate and move, encouraging the viewer’s visual tension. Riley’s vibrant optical pattern paintings painted in the 1960s, were hugely popular and become a hallmark of the period. Riley's mature style developed during the 1960s, this was influenced by a number of sources. During this time Riley began to paint the black and white works for which she is best known. These black and white paintings presented a great variety of geometric forms that produce sensations of movement or color. In the early 1960s, her works were said to “induce sensation in viewers as varied as seasick and sky diving”. From 1961 to 1964 she worked with the contrast of black and white, occasionally introducing tonal scales of grey. These were the works that comprised her first solo show in London in 1962. Riley began investigating color in 1967, the year in which she produced her first stripe painting. Following a major retrospective in the early 1970s, Riley began travelling extensively.

RA 2 - Bridget Riley 1981 - Silkscreen on paper 108x94.5

After a trip to Egypt in the early 1980s, where she was inspired by colorful hieroglyphic decoration. This trip to Egypt was extremely influential to her future work. In some works, lines of color are used to create a shimmering effect, while in others the canvas is filled with tessellating patterns. This was typical of her later colorful works for example in her work Shadow Play.

Movement in squares - Bridget Riley 1961 - Tempera on board 122x122

Bridget Riley’s paintings came to International notice when she exhibited along with Victor Vasarely and others in the Museum of Modern Art in New York at an exhibition called “The Responsive Eye” in 1965. It was one of Riley’s paintings that was featured on the cover to the exhibition catalogue.

Bora III - Victor Vasarely 1964 Oil on canvas 149x141cm

“The Responsive Eye” was a huge hit with the public but less popular with the critics, who dismissed the works as “trompe l’oeil (literally ‘tricks of the eye’)”. A short film “The Responsive Eye” documenting the opening night of the exhibition was made by Brian de Palma.

Despite the critic’s views, Riley held another wildly popular exhibition at this time in the US. This exhibition was at the Richard Feigen Gallery in New York. Tickets sold out on the first day that they went on sale; a remarkable achievement for an artist who was still in her early thirties.

Bridget Riley’s major works of art are very large and took six to nine months to develop and to evolve. She began her art by making small color studies in gouache. Riley hand mixes all of the paints she uses to achieve the exact hue and intensity.

Successful studies lead to a full size paper and gouache cartoon which prefigures the final work. These are then enlarged, ruled up, under-painted with acrylic and over-painted in oils. All of her art is painted by hand no rulers, masking tape or mechanical means are used when applying the paints. Riley chooses to work with assistants since the 1960s because of the large scale and the need for great precision. Bridget Riley is a currently trustee of the National Gallery in London.

Bridget Riley is an innovator in her field who experiments constantly with new ideas that mark new departures. Because of this originality nobody can truly know what the future will bring in terms of her original and unique art, which is demanding both of herself and of those who see them.

Two Blues - Bridget Riley, 2003 - Oil on linen 54.5x53

"For me Nature is not landscape, but the dynamism of visual forces an event rather than an appearance these forces can only be tackled by treating color and form as ultimate identities, freeing them from all descriptive or functional roles.” Bridget Riley

Works Cited

1.         "Bridget Riley Op-Art.co.uk." OpArtcouk RSS. Oily Payne, 2012. Web. 1 Dec. 2012.

2.         "Bridget Riley." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Aug. 2012. Web. 1 Dec. 2012.

3.        "Victor Vasarely Op-Art.co.uk." OpArtcouk RSS. Oily Payne, 2012. Web. 1 Dec. 2012.

4.        "Victor Vasarely." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Sept. 2012. Web. 1 Dec. 2012.