White and black
“Negatives—positives . . . the hallucinatory play of black and white . . . I deduced therefrom, philosophically speaking, that white and black signs, and the inevitable antinomy of the ideas of the past, like ‘day and night’, ‘angel and devil’, ‘good and evil’, are in reality complementaries, a fertile androgynous idea . . . White and black, yes and no, it is the binary language of cybernetics, making possible the building of a plastic bank in electronic brains. White and black, it is the indestructibility of art-thought and hence the perenniality of the work in its original form.”
—Victor Vasarely, 1965; quoted in Optic Nerve: Perceptual Art of the 1960s by John Houston, 2007.
A Wave Under the Moon
“Unknown Chinese artist, A Wave Under the Moon. Twelfth century, ink on silk, detail of a scroll.”
—Optic Nerve: Perceptual Art of the 1960s by John Houston, 2007.
Marina Apollonio
“Marina Apollonio, Italian, born 1940. Installation proposal, 1967/71.”
—Optic Nerve: Perceptual Art of the 1960s by John Houston, 2007.
ANTIVERT
“Packaging
for Antivertigo medication (Antivert), manufacturef by Pfizer Company
Ltd, c. 1970. Private collection, Columbia, Ohio.”
—Optic Nerve: Perceptual Art of the 1960s by John Houston, 2007.
arts of peace
“Optical art, Pop Art and Minimal art were, first and foremost, arts of peace, not arts of war.”
—Dave Hickey, introduction to Optic Nerve: Perceptual Art of the 1960s, by John Houston, 2007.
Op art . . . goes Pop art one better
“Op art . . . goes Pop art one better by being considerably more mindless.”
—Barbara Rose, in ArtForum International, 1965, quoted in Optic Nerve: Perceptual Art of the 1960s, by John Houston, 2007
a world beyond us
“[O]ptical art teaches its beholders a lesson taught by psychedelic
drugs at a considerably higher level of risk: it insists on the
absolute otherness of a world beyond us by dramatizing the threshhold
at which our ability to interpret that world begins to degrade and
disintegrate.”
—Dave Hickey, introduction to Optic Nerve: Perceptual Art of the 1960s, by John Houston, 2007.
WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS NOT?
Via NFG!
the glaring greenish-grey eye of Simon
“As by a fascination, every eye was now directed to the glaring greenish-grey eye of Simon.”
little golden stars twinkled through the glow
“It is now one of those intensely golden sunsets which kindles the
whole horizon into one blaze of glory, and makes the water another sky.
The lake lay in rosy or golden streaks, save where white-winged vessels
glided hither and thither, like so many spirits, and little golden
stars twinkled through the glow, and looked down at themselves as they
trembled in the water.”