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During the 1960s, a new movement burst on the scene with edgy abstract art that seemed to generate light, energy, and space. The artists involved in this movement—quickly dubbed Op Art1—used a wide variety of stylistic approaches and media to investigate ways that the eye, the mind, and memory work together to produce what we think we see. They deployed colors, lines, and patterns in art works that excite the viewer’s retinal, neural, and psychological receptors. Whether they worked in black-and-white or in color, and whatever their intention in terms of stimulating perceptual effects, Op Art painters typically applied pigment as if rolled or laminated by a machine, without distracting brushstrokes. They favored immaculate squares, grids, and targets, as well as diagrammatic and all-over compositional formats that emphasize visual fields, rather than relationships between subject and ground. Op artists also made sculptures and kinetic works that produce optical effects through overlay and motion. An optically-oriented approach to abstraction seemed the very antithesis of painterly Abstract Expressionism that had so recently dominated the post-war art world. Some contemporary critics termed this new style “post-painterly abstraction.” In addition, Op was even cooler than Pop Art, to the point of frigidity. It appeared quasi-scientific; it lacked representational references; it did not express a point of view, much less irony. If, in 1965, optically-based abstract art seemed new, it actually descended from the work of nineteenth-century

color theoreticians such as Michel-Eugène Chevreul (1786–1889), whose book, De la loi du contraste simultané des couleurs et de l’assortiment des objets colorés, 1839,2 inspired a new field of artistic inquiry. Artists interested in Chevreul’s work, including French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), Impressionist painter Claude Monet (1840–1926), and Post-impressionist Pointillist painter Georges Seurat (1859–1891), created works based on their study of Chevreul and their understanding of how the eye sees and the mind perceives. During the first half of the twentieth century, Chevreul’s laws of simultaneous, successive, and mixed contrasts showed up in the work of Synchromist artists Robert Delaunay (1885–1941), Sonia Terk-Delaunay (1885–1979), and Stanton McDonald Wright (1890–1973). During the 1920s and 30s, Marcel Duchamp created kinetic sculptures that he called “rotoreliefs” and “rotodiscs.” Composed of mechanically driven, swirling black and white lines, his sculptures and printed disks seem to generate colors. In the 1920s and 30s, Chevreul’s ideas re-emerged in the writings and art of Bauhaus artists and color theorists Johannes Itten (1888–1967) and Joseph Albers (1888–1976), who would play a pivotal role in teaching color theory and the interaction of color in the United States. By the 1960s, perceptually-based abstraction became a full-fledged contemporary art movement, flourishing especially in the U.K. and Europe. Leading exponents included Bridget Riley, who worked in London, and Victor Vasarely, based in Paris, where

many similar-minded artists gathered around him. In 1965, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, surveyed the many approaches to Op Art with its landmark exhibition, The Responsive Eye.3 In his catalogue essay for that exhibition, curator William C. Seitz wrote, “One wonders why the variability and vital propensities of flat surface colors were harnessed so late in the history of art.” He explained that “the advent of abstract painting was essential to the full liberation of color as an autonomous means” and that “extensive experimentation with modern pigments and such materials as colored papers was necessary before a perceptually functional art could develop.”4 To Seitz’s list of modern art materials, I would add masking tape. It was the essential tool that enabled Op artists to paint, as if by magic, all of those perfectly straight, razor-edged parallel lines. In Vibrations, the Art Center presents a selection of works from the Permanent Collections by artists who were interested in exploring, understanding, and stimulating visual perception as the basis for creating art. Many of these works are screenprints (serigraphs and silkscreens), a process that Op artists and their printers realized was the print medium most ideally suited to the laying down of perfectly flat areas of color. Despite the fact that many of these images look as if they were created by machines, in fact, artists planned and struggled to achieve that clean, mechanical look. Vibrations also features Bridget Riley’s revelatory ink and graphite study for her major painting, Shift, 1963. In this

1. “Op Art: Pictures that Attack the Eye,” Time Magazine, October 23, 1964, vol. 84, no. 17, pp. 42–44.

2. Translated by Charles Martel into English as The principles of harmony and contrast of colours (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans,1854).

3. Artists in Vibrations whose works were shown in The Responsive Eye include: Agam (Yaacov Gipstein), Carlos Cruz–Diez, Sue Fuller, Bill Komodore, Bridget Riley, Frank Stella, and Victor Vasarely. The Responsive Eye was also shown in St. Louis, Seattle, Pasadena, and Baltimore.

4. William C. Seitz, The Responsive Eye (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1965), p. 19.

PRINT GALLERY

JANUARY 18–MAY 12, 2013

VIBRATIONSVIBRATIONS

drawing, she worked out the black-and-white elements to make the surface appear to vibrate and bend. Her handwritten notes on the drawing suggest ways to improve the image’s power. This drawing reveals how much work Riley put into planning a painting that would ultimately seem untouched by human hands. Victor Vasarely’s abstract collage of blue, green, and red paint chips is a perfect example of the use of one of Op artists’ favorite color combinations—the three primary colors of light. When used together, blue, green, and red seem to generate a glow. Vasarely also explored spatial effects through the complex modulation of cellular structures, as in his screenprint of glowing, pulsating geometric forms that seem to map new dimensions. Other works representative of the distinctive approaches that individual artists took to creating art based on the dynamics of seeing include: a lenticular print by Agam (Yaacov Gipstein); two screenprints of layers of diaphanous veils of line that create moiré patterns by Carlos Cruz-Diez; a string composition by Sue Fuller; and a color etching consisting of nine alternating blocks of fine lines and colors by Jesús Rafael Soto. Vibrations also includes optically-active works by several artists who are not typically considered members of the Op Art movement. Precursor Marcel Duchamp is represented in the exhibition by images of his rotodiscs and rotoreliefs from the 1920s and ’30s. Pop artists Roy Lichtenstein and Bill Komodore used halftone dot patterns, and Peter Phillips employed heavy outlines and sizzling color. Although these artists’ appropriation of the look of industrial commercial printing was undeniably a strategy of Pop Art, it is still interesting to see the similarity between their works, especially Lichtenstein’s halftone sculpture, Enamel Landscape, and that of their purely abstract, optically-oriented contemporaries. Likewise, linear compositions and grids by Frank Stella and Minimalists Alex Hay, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt,

and Richard Serra are fascinating to consider in relation to the use of line in Op Art. Vivid hard edge color abstractions with roots in Russian and Bauhaus Constructivism by Herbert Bayer and Ilya Bolotowsky represent then-contemporary alternatives to Op Art. Finally, Chuck Close’s sparkling black-and-white relief etching shows that even his artistic strategy (that is, breaking up a single image of a head into myriad abstract tessellations and making the viewer’s eye reconstruct the figurative image) has its roots in investigations of the dynamics of seeing. Lichtenstein’s, Phillips’, and Close’s works demonstrate that optically-active art did not have to be exclusively abstract. It could at times successfully cross over into representation and figuration. If contemporary art is a reflection of our time, then perhaps optical abstraction—with its frisson of scientific precision and its shimmering illusionism—was the visual counterpart of the Cold War, color TVs, early space exploration, computers programmed by punch cards, and the British pop music invasion. This art which could literally make your eyes feel themselves see flourished as a major movement for only a few years during the 1960s. Ultimately, its nearly physical assault on the eye evolved into other more meditational approaches to chromatic and achromatic abstraction, such as color field painting, grid paintings, and even Minimalism. Fifty years later, as Vibrations looks back on this movement, Op is enjoying a revival. This is manifested in the rediscovery and appreciation of vintage works by artists such as Soto and Cruz-Diez; in the environments constructed by contemporary artist Tobias Rehberger (the café for the Venice Biennale, 2010, for example); and in the clothing of fashion designer Marc Jacobs, whose Spring 2013 collection is nothing less than an eye-popping homage to Op Art.

Amy N. Worthen

This gallery guide is published in conjunction with Vibrations. The exhibition is on view in the Print Gallery of the Des Moines Art Center from January 18 to May 12, 2013.

The exhibition is organized by Amy N. Worthen, curator of prints and drawings.

Support for this exhibition and its programs is generously provided by the Des Moines Art Center Print Club.

© 2013 Des Moines Art CenterAll rights reservedDes Moines Art Center4700 Grand AvenueDes Moines, Iowa 50312-2099515.277.4405www.desmoinesartcenter.org

Design: Annabel WimerPhotography: Rich Sanders, West Des Moines

Cover: Carlos Cruz-DiezCouleur additive, Serie de 2 (Additive Color, Series of 2) (detail), 1981

PDFs of this gallery guide may be downloaded from the Art Center’s website.

Exhibition-related Programs

Print Club ProgramSunday, February 3, 1 pm Levitt Auditorium“What’s Op about Art?” Louis Fingerman, MD, joins Amy N. Worthen to talk about vision and art. Free and open to the public.

Gallery TalkThursday, February 7, 6:30 pmPrint GalleryAmy N. WorthenFree and open to the public.

The Des Moines Art Center’s Permanent Collection contains works by artists who were associated with Op Art in some point in their career, including Joseph Albers, Gene Davis, Ellsworth Kelly, Morris Louis, Agnes Martin, Kenneth Noland, and Larry Poons. Many of their works are on view throughout the museum.

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Exhibition checklistArtists’ names are listed in alphabetical order.Dimensions are given in inches and centimeters. Height precedes width.

1. Agam (Yaacov Gipstein) (Israeli, born 1928)Magic Night Rain, ca. 1970Agamograph (lenticular print) on paper13 x 15 1/2 in. (33 x 39.4 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Keith Shaver in honor of Mary and Roy Shaver, 2012.51

2. Herbert Bayer (Austrian, 1900–1985)Birthday Picture, 1970Screenprint on paper29 3/8 x 29 3/8 in. (80.6 x 80.6 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Wells Fargo & Company, 2003.240

3. Herbert Bayer (Austrian, 1900–1985)Four Segmented Circles, ca. 1970Screenprint on paper29 5/8 x 29 5/8 in. (80 x 81.3 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Wells Fargo & Company, 2003.241

4. Ilya Bolotowsky (American, born Russia, 1907–1981)Untitled, from the “Album Series,” ca. 1969Silkscreen on paper33 15/16 X 19 3/16 in. (91.3 x 65.9 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Wells Fargo & Company, 2003.242

5. Chuck Close (American, born 1940)Small Self-Portrait, 1999Relief etching on paper14 x 11 1/2 in. (35.6 x 29.2 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Peg Buckley, 2010.97

6. Carlos Cruz-Diez (Venezuelan, born 1923)Couleur additive, Serie de 2 (Additive Color, Series of 2), 1981Serigraph on paper31 5/16 x 31 9/16 in. (79.5 x 80.2 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Sicardi Gallery, 2012.78

7. Carlos Cruz-Diez (Venezuelan, born 1923) Couleur additive, Serie de 2 (Additive Color, Series of 2), 1981Serigraph on paper23 3/8 x 31 7/16 in. (59.4 x 79.9 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Sicardi Gallery, 2012.79

8. Marcel Duchamp (French, 1887–1968)(Recto) Rotative plaques verre, New York 1920(Verso) Rotatif demi-sphère, Paris 1925Cœurs volants, Paris 1936Two pages from De ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy (La Bôite en Valise), By Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy (The Box in the Valise), 1955–1968Offset lithographs mounted on black paper from cloth-covered case containing 68 miniature replicas and reproductions16 x 14 5/8 x 3 3/4 in. (40.6 x 37.1 x 9.5 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased with funds from the Mildred M. Bohen Deaccessioning Fund, 1990.9

9. Sue Fuller (American, born 1914)String Composition #105, 1961Saran, threads22 x 22 in. (55.9 x 55.9 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased with funds from the Edmundson Art Foundation, Inc., 1961.51

10. Alex Hay (American, born 1930)Untitled, from the portfolio, “The New York Collection for Stockholm,” 1973Screenprint on paper12 x 8 7/8 in. (30.5 x 22.5 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Robert Rauschenberg, New York, 1976.100.11

11. Donald Judd (American, 1928–1994)Untitled (#120), 1980Etching and aquatint on paper28 3/4 x 33 3/4 in. (73 x 85.7 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Dale Jansen, 2005.5

12. Bill Komodore (American, 1932–2012)Circe #10, 1965-1966Screenprint on paper24 3/4 x 31 3/8 in. (62.9 x 79.7 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased with funds from Rose F. Rosenfield, 1967.42

13. Sol LeWitt (American, 1928–2007)Untitled, from the portfolio “Five Silkscreen Prints,” 1970Silkscreen on paper14 x 14 in. (35.6 x 35.6 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Virginia Dwan, New York, 1987.10.4

14. Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923–1997)Rouen Cathedral #4, 1969Lithograph on paper48 1/2 x 32 1/2 in. (123.2 x 82.6 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Assa Drori, Los Angeles, 1973.33

15. Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923–1997)Enamel Landscape, 1965Enamel on steel28 x 42 x 4 in. (71.1 x 106.7 x 10.2 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Jan and Gardner Cowles, 1976.95

16. Sol LeWitt (American, 1928–2007)Untitled, from the portfolio, “The New York Collection for Stockholm,” 1973Screenprint on paper9 x 9 in. (22.9 x 22.9 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Robert Rauschenberg, New York, 1976.100.14

17. Peter Phillips (British, born 1939)Custom Print I, 1965Screenprint on aluminum24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased by General Memorial Funds, 1966.37

18. Bridget Riley (English, born 1931)Study for “Shift,” 1963Ink and pencil on paper22 x 26 7/16 in. (55.9 x 67.2 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of John and Mary Pappajohn, 1977.29

19. Jesús Rafael Soto (Venezuelan, 1923–2005)Untitled A, 1973Color etching and aquatint on paper26 3/8 x 26 3/8 in. (94 x 94 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Wells Fargo & Company, 2003.296

20. Frank Stella (American, born 1936)Agua Caliente, from “Race Track Series,” 1972Screenprint on paper21 1/2 x 81 1/2 in. (54.6 x 207 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Wells Fargo & Company, 2003.267

21. Frank Stella (American, born 1936)Itata, 1968Lithograph on paper16 1/4 x 22 1/4 in. (41.3 x 56.5 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Wells Fargo & Company, 2003.268

22. Victor Vasarely (French, 1906 or 1908–1997)Ond JG, 1969Screenprint on paper23 3/8 x 23 3/8 in. (67.9 x 67.9 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Wells Fargo & Company, 2003.301

23. Victor Vasarely (French, 1906 or 1908–1997)Untitled, 1969Collage on cardboard13 x 8 1/4 in. (33 x 21 cm.)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of David Kruidenier, Jr. Estate and Elizabeth S. Kruidenier 2002 Revocable Trust, 2012.32