The best way to think of “optical art” is to consider the difference between fine art and commercial art.
Fine Art: Art created by artists to be appreciated by a relatively small group of art lovers who seek out the best and newest work.
Commercial Art: Art created with the purpose of selling to a larger group of people who don’t necessarily seek out the best or newest work.
Optical art is commercial art, usually made with the purpose of selling to a large number of people who are not necessarily seeking out the best or newest work. It is usually made in a factory setting and is meant to entice consumers into buying products through its beauty.
It has some similarity with fine art, but it really isn’t fine art. You can tell optical art from fine art by asking yourself these questions:
Did the artist make this in order to sell it? (If so, it’s optical art.)
Does this look like something that could have been made in a factory? (If so, it’s optical art.)
Does this look like it was made for mass appeal? (If so, it’s optical art.)
Does this look like it was made for people who don’t care about quality? (If so, it’s optical
Optical Art is a very popular genre of art, but there are many people who have never heard of it. If you have been considering purchasing an optical work of art for some time, this article will help.
The first thing to know about optical works is that they are created using only the primary colors red, blue, and yellow. The second is that they don’t use contrasting colors to create their optical effects (a contrast is what causes the eye to “get lost” when viewing an optical piece), although this is not true for all works in the genre. A third characteristic is that these pieces are created on canvas with a paintbrush.
Titling and framing of these pieces are also different from most paintings. Because of their nature as an optical work, they should be titled and displayed with care so that they can be appreciated properly by the viewer. These works should also be framed with care in order to prevent any loss of clarity resulting from the materials used in framing other paintings or photographs.
That being said, the most important thing needed to correctly appreciate an optical work is a little knowledge of how your eyes see color and perceive depth. When looking at an optical work, it’s best to keep your head still and let your eyes “drift”
Optical Art is a marketplace scam. It is not a fine art movement in the sense that Cubism or Impressionism or Abstract Expressionism was. It’s not even “fine art” in the sense that the Gap or Walmart sells “fine art”—i.e., prints of famous paintings, matted and framed.
This is not to say that there are no talented artists involved in the creation of optical art, but their talent does not lie in transforming imagery into optical effects; rather, their talent lies in making optical effects by transforming imagery into something else entirely.
To understand this better, one must go back to the roots of optical art—to the days when Op Art was just a twinkle in someone’s eye. One must go back to the time before anyone realized that Optical Art would be a good way to make money—which, to be honest, was probably sometime in the 1960s (or maybe even earlier).
In those days, Optical Art was a legitimate form of expression. Its practitioners were searching for new ways to see and experience the world around them. They were not driven by commercial concerns; they were driven by artistic concerns.*1
In those days, Optical Art was used primarily as an aid to teaching color theory or perception theory
If you want to buy optical art, you are going to want to know what it is. The term “optical art” can be confusing. It refers both to a type of art and to the optical illusions that make the art interesting.
After all, if the artist just put a bunch of wiggly lines on the canvas, it wouldn’t be optical art; it would just be a bunch of wiggly lines on a canvas. The artist’s job is to create something that looks like an optical illusion even though there is no camera trickery.
How do they do this? They use visual tricks known as “perspective” and “color contrast.” These tricks have been used by artists for centuries but with modern technology, the result is often more striking than the original renderings.
When I was a kid, optical art was the coolest kind of art. It was the trippy stuff you found in the head shops and at rock concerts. It was posters with neon colors and wavy lines, pictures that looked like they were moving when you looked at them from different angles.
It never occurred to me at the time that it was a new kind of art. I just thought that’s how art was supposed to be. I didn’t know about painting or sculpture, just about posters and album covers. But even as a kid, I could tell that some posters were better than others. They had more colors and more complicated designs.
If you bought two posters for $5 each, one of them might be pretty cool, but it wasn’t going to blow your mind. The other might have a design so complicated that you could spend hours staring at it, trying to see all the things in there.
So what is this kind of art? How is it created? How can you tell what’s good and what’s bad? And most importantly, how can you tell whether an optical piece is genuine or just some picture someone printed off the internet?
The word Op Art is short for Optical Art. The movement was invented in the early 1960s by Bridget Riley, who was born in 1930 in London. At that time artists were beginning to experiment with optical illusions, which lead to Op Art.
Op Art is a type of abstract art or geometric abstraction that uses optical illusions and hidden images in the picture plane. It usually consists of colored shapes on a solid background.
A lot of art critics have said that the goal of Op Art is to make people look at an image and be confused about what they are seeing. But most artists have said that their goal is to use visual tricks to get people to see things differently.
Takis is another artist who used optical illusions in his work. He was born in Athens, Greece in 1935 and died in December 2010. He was still painting and making new works right up until his death.
It’s important to know the difference between op art and other types of optical art so you don’t get fooled into buying something that isn’t worth as much as you think it is or spending more for it than you should.
Op art has its roots in the work of artists like Bridget Riley, who began experimenting with optical illusions in the 1960’s. The term “Op Art” was actually first used by Lawrence Alloway in his 1964 article for Studio International magazine.
The term “Op Art” is thought to come from the abbreviation for “optical art,” but others have suggested that it may be from the phrase “operating art.”
Many of these works are created with a combination of natural and synthetic materials, and are often called optical illusions or visual paradoxes. The best-known artists associated with this movement include Bridget Riley, Victor Vasarely, Jimmy Ernst, and Richard Anuszkiewicz.
Another technique associated with Op art is ultraviolet Art (UVA). UVA works are meant to be viewed under a blue light, and are designed to be seen as three-dimensional when lit by fluorescent light. Artists who use this technique include Peter Callesen and James Turrell.
A third technique associated with Op art is Chromo-luminarism (Chroma-Lum). Chromo-Lum employs colored pigments that are reflective rather than absorbent. These works are meant to be viewed in full sunlight, but they often appear