Electric Op

A revelatory book that traces the enduring legacy of geometric abstraction through the last six decades of electronic art and culture.

One of the most popular artistic styles of the 20th century, Op art transformed European geometric abstraction into a global phenomenon in the mid-1960s. Its disorienting patterns and illusions, rendered with machine-like precision, became icons of the futuristic Space Age. As the 1960s faded, Op became a short-lived fad, dismissed by art historians and critics as visual kitsch. Over the last 15 years, however, many museums have re-introduced Op to audiences who enthusiastically embrace it as a reflection of contemporary life. Emerging at precisely the same time as mainstream video technologies and the modern digital computer, Op helped shape the aesthetics of electronic media, becoming the first artistic movement of the Information Age.

Juxtaposing plates of approximately 125 artworks by 80 international artists and collectives from the 1960s to the present (including Victor Vasarely, Vera Molnar, Lillian Schwartz, Peter Halley, Angela Bulloch, JODI, Ryoji Ikeda, and Corey Arcangel), Electric Op offers a scholarly re-evaluation of the legacy of abstraction and the surprisingly intertwined histories of contemporary and digital art. It is also a blockbuster of dazzling works that appeal to all ages, including iconic masterpieces alongside rarely-seen gems. Outstanding works from the collections of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and the Mus嶪 d'Arts de Nantes are supplemented with key loans from other major museums, private collections, and artists.