EXPRESSIONISM

AND
OPTICAL ARTS
 EXPRESSIONISM
A term used to denote the use of distortion and exaggeration
for emotional effect, which first surfaced in the art literature
of the early twentieth century. When applied in a stylistic
sense, with reference in particular to the use of intense
colour, agitated brushstrokes, and disjointed space. Rather
than a single style, it was a climate that affected not only the
fine arts but also dance, cinema, literature and the theatre.
Expressionism is an artistic style in which the artist attempts
to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective
emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in
him. He accomplishes his aim through distortion,
exaggeration, primitivism, and fantasy and through the vivid,
jarring, violent, or dynamic application of formal elements. In
a broader sense Expressionism is one of the main currents of
art in the later 19th and the 20th centuries, and its qualities of
highly subjective, personal, spontaneous self-expression are
typical of a wide range of modern artists and art movements.
Unlike Impressionism, its goals were not to reproduce the
impression suggested by the surrounding world, but to
strongly impose the artist's own sensibility to the world's
representation. The expressionist artist substitutes to the
visual object reality his own image of this object, which he
feels as an accurate representation of its real meaning. The
search of harmony and forms is not as important as trying to
achieve the highest expression intensity, both from the
aesthetic point of view and according to idea and human
critics.
Expressionism assessed itself mostly in Germany, in 1910. As
an international movement, expressionism has also been
thought of as inheriting from certain medieval artforms and,
more directly, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and the fauvism
movement.
The most well known German expressionists are Max
Beckmann, Otto Dix, Lionel Feininger, George Grosz, Ernst
Ludwig Kirchner, August Macke, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein;
the Austrian Oskar Kokoschka, the Czech Alfred Kubin and
the Norvegian Edvard Munch are also related to this
movement. During his stay in Germany, the Russian
Kandinsky was also an expressionism addict.
The subjects of expressionist works were frequently distorted,
or otherwise altered. Landmarks of this movement were violent
colors and exaggerated lines that helped contain intense
emotional expression. Application of formal elements is vivid,
jarring, violent, or dynamic. Expressionist were trying to
pinpoint the expression of inner experience rather than solely
realistic portrayal, seeking to depict not objective reality but the
subjective emotions and responses that objects and events
arouse in them.
The expressionistic tradition was significantly, rose to the
emergence with a series of paintings of Dutch painter Vincent
van Gogh from the last year and a half of his life. There was
recorded his heightened emotional state. One of the earliest
and most famous examples of Expressionism is Gogh's "The
Starry Night." Whatever was cause, it cannot be denied that a
great many artists of this period assumed that the chief
function of art was to express their intense feelings to the
world.
“The Starry Night” – Vincent Van Gogh
Edvard Munch 1863-1944 The Scream
The Flying Carriage by Marc Chagall
Op art, also known as optical art, is a style of
visual art that makes use of optical illusions.

"Optical art is a method of painting

concerning the interaction between illusion
and picture plane, between understanding
and seeing.“ Op art works are abstract, with
many of the better known pieces made in
only black and white. When the viewer looks
at them, the impression is given of
movement, hidden images, flashing and
vibration, patterns, or alternatively, of
swelling or warping.
 OP ARTS IMPORTANT
CHARACTERISTICS

 Movement
 Vibration
 Warping
 Flashing
 Bulging
HOW OP. ART WORKS?
 BLACK & 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. Such as in Bridget Riley's famous painting,
Current (1964), on the cover of The Responsive Eye catalogue, 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 aluminum 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.
HOW OP. ART WORKS?
 COLOR
Beginning in 1966 Bridget Riley began to produce color-based op art, however, other
artists, such as Julian Stanczak and Richard Anuszkiewicz, were always
interested in making color the primary focus of their work. Josef Albers taught
these two primary practitioners of the "Color Function" school at Yale in the
1950s. Often, colorist work is dominated by the same concerns of figure-ground
movement, but they have the added element of contrasting colors which have
different effects on the eye.
For instance, in Anuszkiewicz's "temple"
paintings, the juxtaposition of two highly
contrasting colors provokes a sense of depth in
illusionistic three-dimensional space so that it
appears as if the architectural shape is invading
the viewer's space.
Intrinsic Harmony
by Richard Anuszkiewicz
1965
HOW OP. ART WORKS?
Stanczak's compositions tend to be the most complex of all of the color
function practitioners. Taking his cue from Albers and his influential book
Interaction of Color, Stanczak deeply investigates how color relationships
work. "Stanczak created various spatial experiences with color and geometry;
the latter is far easier to discuss. Color has no simple systematized
equivalent. Indeed, there may be no way to describe it that is both meaningful
and accurate.
Descriptions of it (the color wheel or color solids, for example) are all
necessary distortions. While color derives from the electromagnetic scale that
corresponds to the magnitudes of energy expressed by musical pitch, in fact,
the neurological occidentals by which we experience color make it seem
multidimensional, while musical pitch (not timbre, volume, or duration) is
experienced as a linear relationship...Stanczak's 'gift is for layering. He
arranges transparent patterns upon patterns so that you see through them as
gauziest screens, each one seeming to fold as if it moves.'"
Psychedelic patterns that emerge from the Dreamachine and early
computational experiments parallel Optical Art imagery of the
sixties. Psychedelic patterns that emerge from the Dreamachine
and early computational experiments parallel Optical Art imagery of
the sixties.
Op Artist Victor Vasarely used
the “Alphabet Plasitque” to
create optical illusions. Each
color and shape was assigned
a variable that could easily be
manipulated. The kinetic
relationship of color and shape
gave dimensionality to his
work. He and many other Op
Artists created paradoxical
imagery that challenged spatial
limitations.
 KEK-EG-II NEPTUM III

Victor Vasarely Victor Vasarely

 TER-UR-NB VERTIGO
Victor Vasarely Victor Vasarely
Fragment 3/11 1965
Bridget Riley
These dots are completely white.
 "Rotating rays"
The outer ring of rays appears to rotate clockwise while the
inner one counterclockwise
"THE AUTUMN COLOR SWAMP"
The inset appears to move.
 "A BULGE"
The floor appears to bulge out, though this image
consists of only squares.
 "PRIMROSE'S FIELD“
This checkered background consists of squares but
appears to wave. In addition, this figure also shows
a waving motion illusion.
 "Uzumaki ampan"
Concentric gray circles appear to be spirals.
 "ROLLERS"
Rollers appear to rotate without effort. On the other hand, they
appear to rotate in the opposite direction when observers see
this image keeping blinking.