Optical Art

Optical Art Black-and-white and the figure-ground relationship
Op art is a perceptual experience related to how vision functions. It is a dynamic visual art, stemming from a discordant figure-ground relationship that causes the two planes to be in a tense and contradictory juxtaposition. Op art is created in two primary ways. The first, and best known method, is the creation of effects through the use of pattern and line. Often these paintings are black-and-white, or otherwise grisaille, as in Bridget Riley's famous painting, Current (1964), on the cover of The Responsive Eye catalogue; here, black and white wavy lines are placed close to one another on the canvas surface, creating such a volatile figure-ground relationship that one's eyes begin to hurt. Getulio Alviani chose aluminium surfaces, treated in order to create patterns of light which change as the watcher moves (vibrating texture surfaces). Another reaction that occurs is that the lines create after- images of certain colors due to how the retina receives and processes light. As Goethe demonstrates in his treatise Theory of Colours, at the edge where light and dark meet, color arises because lightness and darkness are the two central properties in the creation of color.