Meandres Belle-Isle 1951

Victor Vasarely made this painting, "Meandres Belle-Isle," using a screen printing process, a technique that emphasizes mechanical reproduction over the handmade mark. The piece presents us with these stacked geometric forms: a white lozenge hovers above two bands filled with organic shapes, all anchored by a black semicircle, like a Dadaist totem pole. The surface is flat, cool, and hard to read as anything but an image. It's a testament to the process, each grey shape in the two middle bands crisply outlined. The interplay between figure and ground, grey and white, creates a subtle tension, a visual vibration that keeps your eye moving. It’s almost architectural, like rows of windows receding into space. Vasarely's engagement with seriality and geometric abstraction reminds me a bit of Sol Lewitt’s wall drawings. Both artists, in their own way, push us to question the relationship between concept, execution, and perception. And that’s a question worth asking, again and again, in art.