Zebra 1950

This small picture, Zebra, by Victor Vasarely, is made of lines, black and white ones. I look at it, and wonder what it was like for the artist to make something so precise, so relentlessly optical. The work’s surface seems to ripple, alive with movement, even though it's just black lines on a white ground. I imagine Vasarely thinking about perception, tricking the eye. Thinking about depth, about foreground and background. When I look closely, I see how the lines are not just straight; they curve and bend, thickening or thinning. It must have been a real puzzle for him to figure out how to create that effect. You get a sense of his hand, of the decisions involved in bringing this image into being. Painters are always looking at other painters' work, whether they know it or not. This feels connected to a longer history of artists exploring perception, from the Impressionists onward. Each generation builds upon the one before. It is all a great big conversation in paint!