Optical Art

A type of abstract art that exploits certain optical phenomena to cause a work to seem to vibrate, pulsate, or flicker. It flourished mainly in the 1960s; the term was first used in print in the American magazine Time in October 1964 and had become a household phrase by the following year, partly through the attention given to the exhibition The Responsive Eye’ held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1965. This was the …

…women’s fashion and in 1965 Riley unsuccessfully tried to sue an American clothing company that used one of her paintings as a fabric design. One of Vasarely’s designs was used on the plastic carrier bags of France’s chain of COOP stores. Among other exponents of Op art the best known is probably the American Richard Anuszkiewicz (1930), a former pupil of Albers; his work is typically concerned with radiating expanses of lines and colours.