Tuesday, September 4, 2007
O and P are for op
Yes, I'm probably cheating a bit. The exercise wasn't meant to be oh-so-clever nor to rush through it, but I'm determined to get through the alphabet by the end of today or tomorrow, and why not think in a different box. Anyway, "op" originated in the sixties and seventies and meant the optical illusional art that people like Andy Warhol and Viktor Vasarely did. Derived from Bauhaus thinking, it emphasized simplicity and unusual / unexpected / clever ways to present and see things. MoMa officially kicked it off with The Responsive Eye in the mid-sixties. There is an element of trompe l'oeil to it, but that's only part of it. Warhol's famous soupcan paintings were early warning shots of what would become op art, and there were the folded canvases where you saw one painting when you stood on one side and another when you stood center-on and yet another from the other side. There were many other variations on many themes and much use of color playing against color, shape against shape. Even fashion designer Mary Quant got in on the act with her sharp-edged geometric designs. Very clever and probably computer-assisted nowadays, but brilliant at the time.
Labels: art, reflections
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