Op Art

An art form based on various visual effects. Op, or optical, art was a very approachable kind of art that reflected an age dominated by advertising, television and film images, and science and technology.

Origins and History

The origins of op, or optical, art can be traced to the work of post-Impressionist artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse, and Vincent van Gogh. These artists’ interest in pure color, along with the focus on geometric abstraction in the works of the constructivists, Futurists, and cubists, provided the foundation for op art.

In the 1960’s, many Americans and Western Europeans fully experienced the affluence of the postwar era. This age of mass production and mass consumption, of widespread advertising images, and of mass media such as film and television, created a rich landscape for a group of artists who made op art. These artists explored and exploited the nature of human vision to produce hard-edged, large-scale works that seemed mechanical and precisely planned.

Op artists drew their motifs from several contemporary forces within their own culture. As science and technology played increasingly large roles in the age of affluence, op artists used mathematical series, numerical progressions, and grids to represent energy and forces and a space-time continuum. At a time when nuclear technology transformed matter into energy, op art used tricks of the eye to transform colors and shapes on a canvas into a surface that gave a viewer a sense of energy and movement. These artists replicated the force of the television and print images from mass media advertising with their simple, direct forms and shapes, their sharp-edged boundaries, and their uniform and intense colors. Drawing on new paint technology, they used store-shelf acrylic and emulsion paints to provide the viewer with a uniform, homogeneous colored surface that mimicked the effect of slick, glossy advertisements. These artworks, bearing no hint of a brush stroke or personal characteristics, were reproduced mechanically in much the same way as mass-produced consumer items found in a society increasingly dependent on large-scale technology.

Op art also reflected the egalitarian thrust of the 1960’s. At a time when more and more people sought a voice in the forces that shaped their lives and their futures, op art required only that a viewer observe the images on the canvas. Neither a trained eye nor specialized knowledge was needed for a viewer to experience the optical effects of these works. They were very approachable in their directness and in their celebration of mass-culture images, a trait op art shared with the pop art of the 1960’s.

American-based artists such as Joseph Albers, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Ellsworth Kelly, and Larry Poons depicted several visual effects in their works. Among the devices or effects they used to draw a viewer into the world of changing perception were the ordered repetition of simple geometric forms; after-images; irradiation or blurring; the phi phenomenon (the sense that fixed dots or other fixed images seem to move); moiré patterns; and the optical effects of color. Theoretically, a viewer’s active and patient participation brought the reward of finding various visual images and effects in one work. This was an art of movement and energy created by stationary forms and shapes and by the artists’ awareness of the physics of color and light.

Impact

Because it reflected the images of a modern industrial Western culture, op art influenced and was influenced by the culture that produced it. This style affected other artists; its influence on the post-painterly abstractionists, who flourished during and after the 1960’s, can be seen in their simple, direct use of geometry and color. The influence of op art on advertising and other media can still be seen. The best example of this is the Woolmark logo used by the clothing industry to indicate wool fabric. The style continues, in part, as a rational, high-tech art that has been given additional exposure as computer-generated art replicates the visual imagery of several op artists who used geometric abstraction as their motif. The pervasive use of images that arrest the viewer’s gaze, especially in mass media advertising, stands as testament to the op artists’ awareness that an art that communicates directly to the viewer through the visual “tricks” of geometry and color is a powerful mass medium in itself.

Bibliography

Barrett, Cyril. Op Art. Studio, 1970.

Gottesman, Sarah. "The Neuroscience of Op Art." Artsy, 27 May 2016, www.artsy.net/article/the-art-genome-project-the-neuroscience-of-op-art.

Parola, Rene. Optical Art: Theory and Practice. Dover Publications, 1969.