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Definition: op art from Philip's Encyclopedia

(optical art) US abstract art movement, popular in the mid-1960s. It relies on optical phenomena to confuse the viewers' eye and to create a sense of movement on the surface of the picture. Leading exponents include Victor Vasarély, Kenneth Noland, and Bridget Riley.


op art

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Type of abstract art, mainly painting, in which patterns are used to create the impression that the image is flickering or vibrating. Often pictures are a mass of lines, small shapes, or vivid, clashing colours that seem to shift under the eye. Op art emerged in 1960 although its roots lie in the colour theories and optical experimentation of Joseph Alber in Germany in the 1920s. Its name, first used in 1964, is a pun on pop art , which was popular at the time. The first major international exhibition of op art was ‘The Responsive Eye’, held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1965. The exhibition was popular with the public, although less so with critics, and op art was regarded as an expression of the mood of the swinging sixties (op art designs appeared in women's fashion, for example). Op art, which relied mainly on mathematics and colour theories to achieve its startling effects, can also be seen as part of the reaction against the subjective emotionalism of abstract…
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Full text Article Op art

From Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable
A form of abstract art that evolved in the 1960s. It gives an illusion of movement by the precise use of pattern and colour or by creating conflicting patterns that emerge and overlap. The name, while patterned on Pop art , is intended as an abbreviation of 'optical art' and was first used in print…
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Full text Article op art

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Type of abstract art, mainly painting, in which patterns are used to create the impression that the image is flickering or vibrating. Often pictures are a mass of lines, small shapes, or vivid, clashing colours that seem to shift under the eye. Op art emerged in 1960 although its roots lie in the…
| 259 words
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Full text Article OP Art

From A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes
(1960) This abbreviation for Optical Art was one of several developments in the wake of the general sense common in the early 1960s that ABSTACT EXPRESSIONISM had declined. (Another was POP ART.) The defining Op mark was an image that, if observed patiently, began to suggest the illusion of…
| 160 words
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Full text Article Op art

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
| 86 words
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From The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language
| 43 words
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From The Columbia Encyclopedia
| 96 words
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From The Chambers Dictionary
| 35 words
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From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary
| 11 words

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From Collins English Dictionary
| 29 words
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From The Macquarie Dictionary
| 38 words
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