Optical Art

by Delaynna Trim, Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art Curator

Do you enjoy those images that look like they are moving even when they are not?  Good news! The Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art is hosting the exhibition, Good Vibrations: The Prints of Victor Vasarely until October 19. 

Victor was an innovative artist in the field of Optical Art. Early on in his career, he experimented with light, shadow, and perspective. His fascination with light came from visiting the south of France and studying the effects of light. Vasarely became a graphic designer and a poster artist during the 1930s combining patterns and organic images.

Optical art uses geometric shapes, lines, patterns, and colors to create the illusion of movement. The term Optical Art was first coined in 1964 by Time magazine about Julian Stanczak's show Optical Paintings at the Martha Jackson Gallery. But many consider Victor Vasarely’s piece Zebra from 1938 to be one of the first examples of Optical art. It is made entirely of curving black and white stripes that create the Zebras.

Victor used small, repeatable geometric shapes and manipulated the colors and shapes into these new optical art pieces. In the late 1950s, he started using the distinctive checkerboard pattern and concave and convex shapes. The viewers’ movement helped change the piece and create endless new art pieces. This simplifying of patterns helped create a universal art language. By the 1960s, Victor created his “Alphabet Plastique” which was a visual compositional system of elements designed to be combined in limitless ways.

Optical Art became popular in the 1960s and 1970s. An exhibition called The Responsive

Eye, at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965 launched Optical art in the US. The works focused on the illusion of movement and the interaction of colors. While many art critics were not a fan, the public loved this new style of art. Over 180,000 people attended the exhibition.

Make sure to stop by the Museum before October 19 to see these pieces move before your eyes!

For Optical Art design ideas, check out, https://www.mgmoa.org/art-projects/

Optical Art Hand Design

Supplies: paper, pencil, markers

1. Lay your arm down on your paper and trace it with your pencil. Start at the very bottom edge of the paper and trace all the way around.

2. Now take a marker. Starting on the bottom left of the paper, draw a straight line that follows the bottom edge. When you reach your pencil wrist, continue the line in an upward arch (like a rainbow) over to the other side of your wrist pencil line.

3. Continue this same pencil line straight across, near the bottom of the page over to the right side.

4. Take a new marker and repeat steps 2 and 3 with a line just a little above your first line.

5. Repeat these steps moving up slightly and changing markers.

6. Each time you are inside the hand/wrist/arm area, make your lines arched. When you are in the spaces on the sides and in between, make your lines straight.

7. Continue this process until you reach the top of the paper.