Art movement - Op Art

Op art, also known as the optical art, is a style of art movement that plays with optical illusions.

 Many artists have been fascinated by the nature of perception and by optical effects and illusions since past centuries. They have been always an essential concern of art, just as much as themes drawn from the literature and history. However, in the 1950s, these preoccupations have associated to the new interest in psychology and technology, blossomed into a movement.

 Op art is typically engaged in abstract patterns that are composed with a stark contrast of foreground and background, most of the time in black and white in order to achieve the maximum contrast. The contrast is the key of producing effects that will excite and confuse the eye.

 The Op art shares the field with Kinetic art initially. Op artists have been drawn to virtual movement whereas the kinetic artists are attracted by the real motion possibilities. Both art styles were launched with Le Mouvement, a group exhibition that was held at Galerie Denise Rene in the year 1965. The Responsive Eye, which was held in same year at Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York, under the direction of William C. Seitz, has showed two types of visual solicitations side by side. Perceptual ambiguity that is created by colored surfaces and Coercive suggestion of movement created by patterns and lines in black and white are the visual solicitations mentioned earlier. The Responsive Eye has caught the public's imagination and has led to a craze for Op designs in the fashion and media.

To many people, Op Art seemed like the perfect style for an age defined by the onward march of science, by advances in aerospace, computing and television. However, Op Art also received many critics from the art critics that were never so supportive on it, attacked its effects as gimmicks and until today it still remains tainted by those dismissals. 

The outstanding Op artists are: Victor Vasarelu, Bridget Riley, Jesus Soto, Yaacov Agam, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Francois Morellet and Julio Le Parc. 

In the digital age, Op Art is viewed with bemusement. They claimed that even a child with the proper graphic design software could produce such art too. This certainly was not the case in the early 1960s. In the olden days, Op Art represents a great deal of math, technical and planning skill, as the art is hand created, not inked out of the computer peripheral. 

That is why, hand-created Op Art deserves respect, at the very least.

I was firstly exposed to Op Art when I had my Psychology class last year in the Pre-University. I was pretty amazed because an art that is drawn and was placed stationary is actually moving no matter how you look at it. This year, I was again being taught about these optical illusion based art in design class and that spiked my interest  even more. In the previous class, we were taught about art movement in class. While scrolling down through the art movement list, I found out that Op Art is one of the art movement too. Although it has been criticized by the art critics, but it is still well known no matter in both fields of science and art. 

Image sources: 

http://vi.sualize.us/op_entertainment_art_optical_illustration_picture_6VL9.html

http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/bluesun.gif

http://www.brasil247.com/get_img?ImageWidth=651&ImageId=193853

References: 

http://www.moma.org/collection/theme.php?theme_id=10139

http://www.theartstory.org/movement-op-art.htm

http://arthistory.about.com/cs/arthistory10one/a/op_art.htm