Quadrature c. 1979

Victor Vasarely made this print, Quadrature, sometime in his life. It's so flat it's almost screaming! Vasarely is playing with us, creating the illusion of depth with nothing but simple shapes and colors, a real formal investigation. Look at how he uses those concentric forms and that super tight, rigid grid to make the image bulge and recede. You have to admire the formal control. The surface is smooth, machine-made, like a billboard, with none of the messiness of the artist’s hand. But in a way, that's the point. No matter how controlled the geometry, our eye can’t help but find the wiggle, the wobble, and the unpredictable. You can almost hear Bridget Riley and Sol Lewitt chatting about this over a glass of wine. But of course, like any good piece of art, it’s not about one thing, it’s about everything at once. And it’s up to us to decide what that “everything” means.