Ondocto-fa 1972

Victor Vasarely made Ondocto-fa with geometric shapes and a playful palette of blues, greens, and reds. I see the ghost of graph paper and tape in this image. I wonder if Vasarely felt like a stage magician while making this picture? “Look folks, it’s flat! No wait, it’s concave! Now it’s convex!” The way that he organized the geometric forms makes the painting feel like an experiment in perspective, like a funky drawing exercise. It reminds me of Frank Stella and his colorful hard-edge paintings, but with the added wackiness of M.C. Escher. Vasarely must have known that painting could be a game, a way to trick the eye and mess with the mind. And in this way, art gives us new forms for embodied expression. It embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, and allows for multiple readings.