Meta #5 1976

Victor Vasarely created Meta #5 and what strikes me is how, with careful rendering and a playful approach to the cube, he made it feel like the painting is popping out at you. I wonder, when he was making this, was he thinking about the intersection between math and magic? Like how to make something so flat feel like it's occupying space with you? Maybe Vasarely was thinking about other artists like Josef Albers playing with after-images and perceptual illusions, or maybe he was just trying to figure out how to make something cool. It feels like an experiment, the way he uses colour and the shape of the cubes to create that spherical illusion. The whole painting feels like a question. And now, years later, we're still looking and wondering. That's the thing about painting – it's an ongoing conversation.