Page 65 - Studio International - May 1970

Letter from

Paris:

Op art and . . .

Christiane Duparc

Piet Mondrian
Composite Dambord, Fichte Bleuren 1919
Oil on canvas
86x 106 cm.
Coll: Hangs Gemeentemuseum, The Hague
2
Paul Klee
Division dans le Came
3
Wassily Kandinsky
Square 1927
74 x 60 cm

Always first, always Best in Show, Vasarely he sees himself as a man of inspiration, racked
invented it all. He has left nothing for the by crises, shaken by tremors, who feverishly
others to do; as far as his eye can see there is dashes his message down on paper in all its
nothing but a drab herd of disciples—his blazing intensity. 'All at once I am illuminated
epigoni. Even at the barricades, he left every- by that lightning flash which used to be
one else standing. 'The barricades ? I was called inspiration. I take very hasty notes.
there—in a figurative sense—back in 1928, ... One day, in a fraction of a second, I had
when the struggle between figurative and the revelation that this background had to be
abstract functionalist art began. Since then I metallic.'
have never left my place in the firing line.' With a certain air of wonderment, this child
That's the way he talks, this man Vasarely; of fate recalls his first youthful scrawls : 'As a
there are pages of it in his Entretiens, the book child, I was already attracted by profound
of interviews with Jean-Louis Ferrier which kinetic effects.... I must have been seven or
has just been published in France by Beyond. eight years old when I first came into contact
There is the same tone of uncompromising with dynamic structures.... Handling a band-
self-advertisement in the catalogue preface to age I was discovering, without knowing it, the
the Vasarely exhibition which opened in infinite kinetic possibilities which spring from
March at the Galerie Denise René. For the superimposed networks.' It is hopeless to
hundredth time we are told, with reference argue about dates and influences with a man
this time to his latest paintings and sculptures, who found his sources of inspiration in his
that he is the superman of Op Art, the nec plus nursery. This doubtless explains the bold
ultra of the stripe pattern, the permanent syntheses and surprising juxtapositions which
Number One Goalscorer of the Ecole de Paris. repeatedly appear in the Entretiens. 'I was
Three centuries ago the great Nicolas Poussin working on a series of works called Homage
said of his own paintings: 'These are not to the Hexagon. In a flash, I realized the parallel
things that a man might do while whistling a which providentially existed between my
tune.' This kind of modest image-boosting is formal investigations and a symbol: that of
out of fashion. One is expected to go in for France the Hexagon.'
verbal inflation, sledgehammer techniques, All this is shrouded in a gloomy metaphysic
overkill. For example : 'I am conscious of which takes us a long way from Vasarely the
having carried out the first major program- engineer, who sometimes sounds like an
ming of structuralist plasticity which ever animated computer. 'The idea of life after
afforded an opening towards cybernetics.' death haunts us; we are powerless.... With-
(Entretiens, p. 180.) out illusions man cannot exist.... The infinite
Who is Vasarely? From one angle he sees fills us with anguish and suggests to us the
himself as an engineer of vision, a cold vanity of all effort.... The race is hard,
prophet of an art which will manufacture especially at the finish.'
beauty in a computer. But from another angle Roaming the galaxies with Teilhard de