Op Art & Kinetic Art

The modern art/contemporary art movement of Op art started in 1964. A group of artists were demonstrating the relationship between seeing and understanding through mainting pictures that consisted of optical illusions. The idea of Op Art was to highlight the fact that the eyes can trick the mind in to seeing things that aren't there and that if visual illusions can trick the eye so can words and propaganda.

The term Op Art for this modern art/contemporary art movement arose from when an article in Time magazine in 1964 was written about the contemporary art movement. Time magazine gave the term 'Op Art' to paintings that focused on manipulation of the eye. The modern art/contemporary art movement that was Op Art became very popular with the intellectuals and throughout social circles.

The forming of this modern art/contemporary art movement was as a result of previous modern and traditional art movements. The renaissance artists experimented with optical illusions so that flat surfaces could appear 3 dimensional. The mannerists would create alternate images for the human eye. They would often distort their paintings with puzzle like images in order to create illusions. So it is possible to see a natural progression which lead to the modern art movement of Op art being founded.

The Op artists said that the majority of their inspiration came from the post Impressionist art movement. For example 'Seurat' created a style of painting called Pointillism which was a huge inspiration to the Op Artists. Pointillism consists of dots which appear to form together to make different colours which is in fact an optical illusion.

The modern art/contemporary art movement of Op art used the above techniques and their art proved to be very popular during the 1960's.

Below are the artists that invented and pioneered Op Art. Please click on their names to find out information about each artist:

If you found this article interesting please read the other modern art/contemporary art movement articles outlining:Post Impressionism, Cubism, Abstract art, De Stijl, Expressionism, Conceptual Art, Fauvism, Futurism, Impressionism, minimalist, Dadaism, Pop Art, Pointillism, Op Art, Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism and other modern art, contemporary art or abstract art movements.