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Students are to research the Op Art movement and incorporate main ideas into an optical painting using shapes and colour optical distortions.
This lesson provides an opportunity to develop and consolidate the knowledge about elements of design, specifically shape and colour and their impact in the compositional layout of an artwork.
Website referenced to Itten
http://www.creativityatwork.com/colour.htm
Michel Eugene Chevreul
In 1893 Chevreul published a theory of colour basing on his theory of colour contrasts. Working at a carpet manufactory as a physicist, he used his knowledge of the simultaneous contrast, to create very many colours in carpet with a minimum of elementary colours. With this method of the optical colour mixing ( viewed from a certain distance neighbouring colour dots dissolve in the observer's eye he had a direct influence on the theories and pictures of George Seurat, the founder of pointillism. With his theories of colours he had an immense influence on other painters in the Impressionist movement and the Orphist - colour cubists, Robert and Sonia Delaunay
Johannes Itten: Die Begegnung, 1916
Johannes Itten born in Switzerland 1888, an art teacher who recognized the basic laws of colour and form, proportions, texture and rythmn as the foundation of his own concepts of art education. One of the chief features of Itten's contribution to the art of colour is "The Seven Colour Contrasts".
Time: 4 periods X 50 minutes. This includes research, discussion creating and presentation.
Victor Vasarelly with some of his optical artwork (source:Masterworks website)
Victor Vasarely is internationally recognized as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. He is the acknowledged leader of the Op Art movement, and his innovations in color and optical illusion have had a strong influence on many modern artists. Vasarely's works are included in almost every major museum in the world which has a collection of contemporary art. Major museums in Aix-en Provence, France and Pecs, Hungary and a wing of the Zichy Palace, Hungary, are devoted exclusively to his work.
Vasarely was born in Pecs, Hungary in 1906. After receiving his baccalaureate degree in 1925, he began studying art at the Podolini-Volkmann Academy in Budapest. In 1928, he transferred to the Muhely Academy, also known as the Budapest Bauhaus, where he studied with Alexander Bortnijik. At the Academy, he became familiar with the contemporary research in color and optics by Jaohannes Itten, Josef Albers, and the Constructivists Malevich and Kandinsky.
You can find out more about Vasarely at this website: Masterworks
Some more of Vasarelly's artwork:
Josef Albers (18881976) was born in Bottrop, Westphalia, Germany. In 1920, at age 32, he enrolled at the newly-formed, progressive Bauhaus school in Weimar. (The Bauhaus, a design workshop formed by architect Walter Gropius, was "dedicated to merging the traditionally separate disciplines of the fine and applied arts in an effort to improve the quality of modern life in all its aspects and, ideally, at every social level. At the Bauhaus, the design of a teapot was as important as the architecture of a building, and the craft of furniture making as serious an undertaking as mural painting."1)
After finishing his studies there, Albers joined the faculty to teach the preliminary course on material and design. It was during his time with the Bauhaus that Albers came into his own as a creative talent. Eventually becoming Assistant Director and Director of the Furniture Workshop, he retained his position with the Bauhaus until it was forced to close, under Nazi pressure, in 1933. In America at Black Mountain Institute, he emerged there as one of America's most important and original teachers of art—a reputation solidified by the publication decades later of Interactions of Color, the definitive work on color theory."
In 1971 he was the first living artist ever to be the subject of a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Albers died in 1976 at the age of 88. Albers's earliest works were figurative drawings and paintings. His style became increasingly abstract at the Bauhaus where he began to explore abstraction and color, his primary lifelong preoccupations. He was fascinated by the ambiguities of visual and spatial perception.
This preoccupation is central to his famous "Homage to the Square" series begun in the 1950s and continuing until his death. In this series, color assumes the main role of producing deceptive and unpredictable effects, causing multiple readings of the same hue depending on what colors surround it. Albers did not mix colors, putting the colors on the painting right out of the tube. He forced his viewers into a changing and dynamic relationship with his work, rather than accepting one visual truth.
"...I see colour as motion…To put two colour together side by side really excites me. They breathe together. It's like a pulse beat… I like to take a very weak colour and make it rich and beautiful or work on its neighbours. I can kill the most brilliant red by putting it with violet. I can make the dullest grey in the world dance by setting it against black… Josef Albers, 1973
3. Students would compare and discuss Op arts works from different times, places and culture. An example is below:
Roger Clarke 1998 - Drawing for multicolourcoat, Itten series, 1998
Roger Clarke an English Sculptor using modern day materials of steel and plastics. The work is a large scale construction. He has been obviously influenced by colour theories and art work of the Op Art movement.
The art of Sandor Kara
Sandor Kara: , "Black Study Collection 8","Perfect Perspective","Gomb","Black Study Collection 7"
Students should choose which type of optical illusion they are to design, whether it be lineal, colour distortions or use of design elements - shapes.
Draw up preliminary sketches on graph paper.
Students are to do a small mock up piece to test effect of visual illusion, colour combinations and effect of repetition.
Enlarge successful mock up work and draw cartoon on A2 Cartridge.
The teacher demonstrates the use brushes to create a hard edge and flat colour in a painting.
Students proceed painting refining design as they go.
After all paint surfaces are dry student can glaze artworks.
Student work can be displayed together or apart depending on the variation of colour use and the type of visual illusions.
Art work can be scanned and combined as a group project for an online gallery for school's intranet or school's web page.
Itten: The Elements of Color, Van Nostrand Reinhold Co, New York, 1970
Optics Index | Optics Lesson Idea 1 | Optics Art Lesson Idea 2 | Worksheet 1 | Worksheet 2 | Worksheet 3 | Worksheet 4 | Worksheet 5 | Activity Sheet 1 | Activity Sheet 2 | Activity Sheet 3 | Associated Web Links