Vega-Sakk
ca. 1968
30 1/2 x 26 5/8 in. (77.5 x 67.6 cm)
Victor Vasarely
French
(Pécs, Hungary, 1906 or 1908 - 1997, Paris, France)
Object Type:
Print
Medium and Support:
Serigraph
Credit Line:
Given in memory of Zelda Hart by her daughters Roberta Wilson and Dorothy Silber
Accession Number:
1997.172
Location: Not currently on view
In this print, Victor Vasarely combines many of the cues that indicate spatial depth to make a large sphere-like shape appear to protrude from the center of the image. Your eye might first be drawn to the dark circle in the center. Next, your gaze might drift towards the edge of the composition and then through a network of increasingly smaller circles. As the circles diminish in size, the colors become duller.
For Vasarely this bulging effect referred to the pulsing motion and rotation of the brightest star in the Lyra constellation, Vega. How would you describe the “star’s” movement? Is it emerging from the background or sinking back into it?
[Label copy from Seeing in Color and Black and White, 2018]
Victor Vasarely is best-known for his experiments with spatial illusion, perceptual ambivalence between positive and negative space, moving forms and strange distortions. On a trip to America in the mid 1960s he found that what the Europeans were calling Kineticism was being called Op Art. Vasarely felt strongly that this innovative type of art was the answer to the new human requirement for speed, shock and excitement, generated by the mind-blowing technological advances of the age.
[Label Copy, Collection Connections - Psychedelic, installed September 15, 2010
Curated by Cynthia Culbert]