How is the technique of movement created in Optical Art? What effects does it produce?
ART
How is the technique of movement created in Optical Art? What effects does it produce?
With the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the 19th century, new art styles and movements appeared and disappeared at an increasingly fast pace, thus reflecting the growing rate of changes in our society. How is movement created in Optical Art? And what effects does it produce? Op Artists, Bridget Riley (1931-) and Victor Vasarely (1908-1997) demonstrates this clearly in their unique paintings, which will be explained in this essay. Optical Art, also commonly known as 'Op Art' is a movement, which was most prominent between the years 1965 and 1968. Op Art first grabbed public attention when an article appeared in Americas "Time" magazine, October 1964, through works that might now be described as ‘Op Art’ had been produced for several years previously. It has been suggested that Victor Vasarely's works such as Zebra (1938), which is made up entirely of diagonal black and white stripes curved in a way to give a three-dimensional impression of a seated , should be considered the first works of Op Art. Vasarely was one of the pioneers of Optical art - Op Art - that developed alongside Pop Art in the 1960s. Bridget Riley is perhaps the best known of the Op artists. Taking Vasarely's lead, she made a number of paintings consisting only of black and white lines. Rather than giving the impression of some real-world object, however, Riley's paintings frequently give the impression of movement or colour. Riley later produced works in full colour, and other Op artists have worked in colour as well, although these works tend to be less well known. Violent contrasts of colour are sometimes used to produce similar illusions of movement. Many critics denounced Op art, saying that it had been done before and that it was just glorification of basic design and psychology textbooks. However, for those three years, Op art influenced a variety of fields, such as fashion, fabrics, poster design and interior decor.
Op Art is a style popular in the 1960s that was based on optical principles and optical illusion. Optical Art is a mathematically oriented form of Abstract art, which is defined in which real objects in nature are represented in a way that completely or partially neglects their true appearance and expresses it in a form of sometimes-unrecognisable patterns of lines, colours and shapes. There are several characteristics that create Op art; Generally characterized by hard-edged black and white patterns or geometric shapes which use repetition of simple forms and complex colour interactions, to the point where colours and lines seem to vibrate before the eyes, moiré patterns, an exaggerated sense of depth, foreground-background confusion, impressions of movement, flashing and vibration, or alternatively of swelling or warping and other visual effects. Op Art greatly influenced fashion, commercial design, and other aspects of the popular culture of the era. Op Art began with the desire to involve a correlation between seeing and understanding. The movement involved in Op Art is that it manipulates the eyes or creates an optical illusion. Similar to other movements, the Op Art artists did not use conventional paint and brush techniques. Instead, the artists used a limited colour scheme, and a limited style to draw shapes and objects. Each painting or design had its own way of escaping the human eye. Although this movement was relatively short, the artistry they displayed was important to all art movements and art lovers. In a sense, all painting is based on tricks of visual perception, using rules of perspective to give the illusion of three-dimensional space, mixing colours to give the impression of light and shadow. With Optical Art, the rules that the eye applies to makes sense of a visual image are themselves the "subject" of the artwork. An Op artist must be aware of how the eye sees to be able to create such art. Op art relies on how we see, how our eyes move over a picture plain. Through the mathematically planned placement of line, shapes, and colour, an Op artist is able to control the movement of the eye, not allowing it to stop and concentrate on one certain area of the painting, therefore accelerating the movement of the eye on the picture surface. That may contribute to the feeling of tired eyes after looking at Op art for long periods of time. This movement is achieved mainly by the repetition of simple elements in a grid formation. In Op art, there is no figurative or representational objects for the audience to associate with, which leaves the art to direct perceptual appeal.
