October 23 - Op Art

Image courtesy christies.com

On this day, in 1964, Time magazine first used the term Op Art to describe the craziness your eyes were seeing in that painting. Optical Art actually started appearing on the art scene decades before Time coined the phrase and was an amalgamation of influences from several different other art styles. Think about what you might create if you took your cues from Neo-Classicism (Surat's Sunday in the Park), Cubism (Picasso's, well, almost anything), the shock value of Dadaism, the speed and youth of Futurism and a Russian Architecture style known as Constructivism. Personally, I would create an absolute mess but artists far better than me came up with the picture seen here, one of Victor Vasarely's series of zebra paintings.

As you might notice if you google images of op art, most of them (but certainly not all) are done in black and white and most of them involve some sort of optical illusion. They seem simple at first but as you look at them, you get the feeling that part of picture is moving or there is a hidden image trying to come out of the depths. Most op art is also abstract, with plenty of lines and geometric shapes but not a whole lot of discernible figures (the above example being the exception that proves the rule).

Image courtesy theartstory.org

Op Art should not be confused with Pop Art, which was also hitting its stride in the 1960s, but used pop culture icons like comic books and advertising as inspiration. It should also not be confused with the works of M.C. Escher, which also involved a lot of optical illusions, but was based more on mathematics rather than abstract aesthetics.

Perhaps the height of Op Art in America occurred in early 1965 when the Museum of Modern Art in New York City put on an exhibition called The Responsive Eye. It featured prominent works by American artists such as Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Anuszkiewicz and the Cleveland based Anonima Group. The public loved what they saw with over 180,000 people visiting MoMA in two months. The critics dismissed most of it as being mind tricks suitable for kitschy roadside tourist traps rather than art museums. No one paid much attention to the critics and Op Art continued to grow in popularity and commercialism (which is exactly what the critics hate to have happen to art).

Image courtesy op-art.co.uk

Since the Sixties, the art world in general has, of course, turned its collective eye towards other movements. It might not be a good time to start a career in Op Art, but there are still artists creating new pieces and some of their paintings are still commanding seven figure prices at auctions. Bridget Riley, a British artist, had works in The Responsive Eye and also enjoyed a retrospective of her work this year at the Scottish National Gallery. And in 2008, one of Bridget’s paintings, Chant 2, sold for $5.1 million at Sotheby’s, a price that, like the painting itself, only feels like an optical illusion.

Also on this day, in Disney history: Dumbo