CHARI 1976

Victor Vasarely made this painting, Chari, using flat colour and geometric forms to create an illusion of depth, a kind of visual trickery. Look at how each circle is divided into quadrants of colour: lavender, yellow, pistachio, and baby blue, floating on a dark inky ground. This combination of soft hues, all pastel-like, and hard-edged geometry shouldn’t work, but somehow it does! Vasarely’s careful arrangement of these forms gives the work a convex feel, like you could touch the canvas and feel a bubble popping out at you. There’s something so orderly in its geometry, it reminds me of Sol Lewitt’s structures, but with a playfulness that is all Vasarely. What I love about Op Art is how the artist can create a whole new world simply through the arrangement of shapes and colours. Vasarely's work reminds us that seeing is not always believing, and that art can be a delightful game of perception.