Papillion 1981

Victor Vasarely made this serigraph, Papillion, with inks to create an optical illusion. He’s not trying to trick you, but he is trying to make you think about how you see. The texture is smooth, even, because it is printed, so you don’t get a sense of the artist’s hand, instead it's this feeling of something produced or manufactured. Notice how the rigid grid of squares is distorted, bent, as if under pressure. Where the blue and orange meet, it feels like they're pushing into each other. It’s like he's asking, can a flat surface convey depth? Can simple shapes create movement? Vasarely's work shares a lot with Josef Albers' exploration of color, but with a graphic punch. Like all good art, it’s not about answers, but about opening up new questions and ways of seeing the world.