Sunbather 1982

This screenprint, Sunbather, was made by Victor Vasarely, who thought about art as a process of seeing through form, a kind of visual play. Look at the bands of color, pinks and grays, stacked and curved like the topographical map of a body. In this print the surface feels super flat, but the repetition of the horizontal bands and undulating curves hints at depth. It's like a mirage, a sort of optical trick, but with the addition of body parts. See how the absence of color becomes a pair of lips, an eye, a belly button? The negative space, this play of figure and ground, is really working hard. The flattened forms of this print make me think about Matisse and his cutouts. The difference is that where Matisse emphasizes the handmade, Vasarely is interested in the possibilities of mechanized reproduction. In a way, he is interested in the mass production of seeing.