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Carlos Cruz-Diez was an artist and member of the Op Art movement whose work focuses on the kinetic energy of color. He was born on August 17, 1923, in Caracas, Venezuela, traveling to Paris where he became interested in the colors of the European countryside as they differed from his home country. Upon his return to Caracas, he opened a studio and began to investigate kinetic and optical forms of art- the former especially, which had formed into a movement in Caracas, thanks to artists such as Jesús Rafael Soto and Alejandro Otero. Cruz-Diez's work is based on the moiré effect, in which lines of contrasting color give the impression of movement, best exemplified in his Physiochrome series. For a time, he taught kinetic technique at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and later work as the director of art for the Institute for Advanced Studies in Caracas. In 1997, his home city honored the artist when they opened the Carlos Cruz-Diez Print and Design Museum. In 2002, he was awarded by France the medal for Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. The artist passed away on July 27, 2019 in Paris, France.

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Carlos Cruz-Diez was an artist and member of the Op Art movement whose work focuses on the kinetic energy of color. View Carlos Cruz-Diez's 794 artworks on artnet. Find an in-depth biography, exhibitions, original artworks for sale, the latest news, and sold auction prices.

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Sure, I read through The Marketer's Crash Course in Visual Content Creation and learned some sweet PowerPoint and Photoshop tricks that have helped me a lot with my content marketing job. But I really wanted to take my design skills to the next level.

So I asked all my designer friends what my next step should be -- and every single one said to take a course on typography.

Why typography? Turns out that while the importance of typography is often overlooked, it plays a critical role in strengthening your brand, creating interest in your product, and highlighting your central message. Knowing that, I decided to sign up for a typography course at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Couldn't hurt to learn how to identify a good font from a bad one, right?

I learned a lot more than that. I realized that paying attention to even the littlest details of type can make all the difference in the world when you're laying out an email, ebook, or image for social media.

This is why I wanted to write this post: to share the most important learnings and resources with my fellow marketers.

So, what do you say? Are you ready to take your DIY design skills to the next level? Let's get started.

Click on a section header below to jump to that section:

What Is Typography?

Before taking this course, typography -- to me, at least -- was more the art of scrolling through a dropdown menu until I found a font that looked like it could work. But it turns out there's a lot more to it than that.

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type, type meaning letters and characters.

Notice that it's about more than just the design of letters and characters; the arrangement of those letters and characters is just as big a part of it all. That refers to the selection of point size, line length, and spacing, both on a single line and throughout an entire page or piece of work.

To understand where the importance of arrangement comes in, I like to think back to Johannes Gutenberg's printing press. At one point in time, people practiced typography using printed materials -- meaning they were literally taking letters and characters and arranging them in physical space.

Today, thanks to computers, open source fonts, and scalable computer typography, it's a lot easier to arrange letters and characters. But that physical piece remains important, even in the digital sphere.

Why Is Typography Important?

Typography is absolutely everywhere. Just look at your phone, a billboard, your coffee cup, or even the different styles used in this blog post. Every font, letter, and character arrangement plays a part in determining how a message is conveyed.

Sure, it might seem trivial at times, but even the smallest of type adjustments can impact the look and feel of your work. For example, back in June, Facebook tested a new font on its users called Geneva. While the new font was only slightly thinner and lighter than the original, Helvetica, it made a noticeable difference to some.

"The overall effect is a lighter, more modern looking block of text," explained Chris Mills for BGR.

Same goes for when Apple changed its default font from the dramatically thin Helvetica Neue to one they developed in-house called San Francisco.

"The differences between Helvetica and San Francisco are subtle, even to the trained eye, but they're there," wrote Liz Stinson for WIRED. "While still an austere sans serif, San Francisco is bolder and friendlier than Helvetica Neue. Based on the German typeface DIN, San Francisco gives characters more breathing room, which will make it easier to read on relatively tiny mobile screens. Tall and skinny, San Francisco is space-efficient, like Google's custom typeface Roboto, which you could consider a close cousin to Apple's font."

The takeaway here? The little details do matter.

In fact, one of the only college courses Steve Jobs took was on calligraphy and typography, which he believed played a critical role in the success of Apple. As he once said in a Stanford University commencement speech, "If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts." Can you imagine a world where Apple products didn't have a focus on beautiful design? I certainly can't.

Once you realize how much thought goes into carefully selecting a typeface, it becomes much easier to recognize the differences between typefaces and understand why they might've been chosen in the first place. Take a look at some of the examples below to get a better sense of what I mean ...

Ready to move on to some typography terminology? Let's go.

Typography Definitions & Terms

Typefaces vs. Fonts

If you thought these two words were interchangeable, you're not alone. But they actually mean two different things.

Typographer, Nick Sherman, once used a great analogy to explain the differences between the terms "typeface" and "font." He suggested comparing these typography terms to the musical terms "song" and "mp3." When you're explaining how much you enjoy a particular tune, you say, "I love this song!" You wouldn't say, "I love this mp3!" The song is the work of art, whereas an mp3 file is just the delivery mechanism.

The same rules apply in typography. You should use the word "typeface" when describing the creative work (i.e., what you see). This is a more abstract design term used when referring to the way a specific collection looks or feels. For example, Helvetica is a typeface.

If you're describing the physical embodiment of the collection of letters and characters, you should use the term "font." It refers to what you use -- whether that's a file on your computer or a case full of metal letters. This is the tangible representation of that collection of letters and characters. For example, Helvetica Bold and Helvetica Light Oblique are fonts.

Here's how you could use these two terms in a sentence:

The Anatomy of a Typeface

It's way easier to communicate with designers when you actually speak their language, which is why it's important to understand the anatomy of a typeface.

Each part of a letter has its own special term, similar to bones in a human body. Below, you'll see three diagrams that explain the makeup of individual letters, how these elements interact with each other, and how they sit on a line.

For example, let's take with the word "Faulty" as it's shown in the picture below.

Here's how each of the terms here are defined:

Baseline: The line where the letters sit.

Cap height: The distance from the baseline to the top of the capital letter.

X-height: Located in between the baseline and the cap height, it's the height of the body of the lowercase letter. (In this case, it's the letters 'a,' 'u,' and 'y.')

Bowl: The curved part of the character that encloses the circular or curved parts of some letters, like 'd,' 'b,' 'o,' 'D,' and 'B.' (In this case, it's that round shape sticking off the letter 'a.')

Serif: The slight projection finishing off a stroke of a letter in certain typefaces. (In this case, it's that little foot sticking off the letter 'l.')

Descender: The longest point on a letter that falls beyond the baseline.

Now, let's look at the word "flash":

Here's how these terms are defined:

Ligature: The stroke that joins adjacent letters. (In this case, you'll notice the 'f' and the 'l' smush together to form one character.)

Stem: The base of a letter, similar to the stem of a flower.

Spine: The curvy body of the letter 's' -- and only the letter 's.' It gets its own term because the spine can be almost vertical or mostly horizontal, depending on the typeface.

Ascender: The portion of a letter that extends above the mean line of a font -- i.e., is taller than the font's x-height. (In this case, you'll also notice the letter 'h' is actually taller than the x-height.)

Still with me? Just a few more here. Let's take a look at the word "Beef":

Here's how these terms are defined:

Cross bar: The bar that goes across the inside of the letter and connects one side to another. (In this case, it's the bar inside the capital letter 'B.')

Counter: The empty space in the middle of letters such as 'B', 'O', or 'A.'

Finial: The tapered end of letters such as 'e' or 'c.'

Terminal: A type of curve that you see at the top of the letter 'f' or the end of the letter 'j.'

Good work. Now that you know the anatomy of letterforms, let's get into the terms related to spacing: kerning, tracking, leading, and hierarchy.

Kerning

Kerning is the modification of the space between two letters. For example, check out the image below:

Here, I used Franklin Gothic Medium to showcase the natural space you see between two letter T's. It looks a little too snug, right? By customizing the spacing between just these two letters, you'll be able to increase readability.

Tracking

Similar to kerning, tracking deals with a modification to letter spacing. However, instead of adjusting the spacing between just two letters, tracking is an adjustment to the spacing between all letters an entire word. See the difference below:

For this example, I chose to make an extreme adjustment to the tracking. Typically, you'd want to apply tracking in small increments to avoid causing readability issues.

Leading

Remember in high school when you had to double-space your essays? Well, the terms "single-space" and "double-space" can also be called "leading," which is the distance between the baselines. See leading in action:

You can choose to increase your leading, creating more space between the baselines, or decrease your leading, which pushes your lines of text closer together. The reason high school teachers asked for essays to be double-spaced was because it's much easier to read, and they could make corrections to the text more easily.

Hierarchy

As you read through this blog post, you'll notice certain words stand out more than others. That's what designers would call creating a hierarchy. You can use different weights (bold, regular, light), styles (italic), and sizes to create a sense of order within your text. Not only does this help create a legible flow, but it helps the reader see what the most important points are.

Here's an example of what hierarchy looks like:

In most cases, you want people to read the title first. That's why you'll see most titles are much bigger and bolder than the body text. Call-out quotes and descriptive sentences can also stand out above the rest of the text using techniques such as bolding and italicizing.

With effective hierarchy, the reader should be able to jump from one section to the next to identify the most important points.

Got all these typography terms down? Cool. Let's move on to how typography is organized with type classifications and type families. (Takes you back to biology class a little, doesn't it?)

Type Classifications

The two main type classifications you see are called serif and sans serif. Other classifications include slab serif, blackletter, script, modern, and decorative. Let's start with the most common two, and then touch on just a few others to give you an idea of what they're all about.

Serif

Remember when I pointed out the little foot in the word "Faulty?" Typefaces with feet like that are called serif. You can see where I highlighted these little feet below:

Common serif typefaces include Times New Roman, Georgia, and Garamond. If you're reading a novel, you might notice the body text is a serif. That's because a serif is much easier to read in long, printed works due to the distinctiveness between letters.

Sans Serif

In French, the word "sans" means "without." So the term "sans serif" literally means "without serif." In the image below, you'll notice the words lack serifs, as I pointed out with the red arrows.

Common sans serif typefaces include Arial, Verdana, and Futura. You'll see a lot of sans serifs being used in blog posts and documents on the web because it feels more modern and looks great even at lower screen resolutions.

Blackletter

Blackletter typefaces, also referred to as Gothic, Fraktur or Old English, are known for its dramatic thick and thin strokes and its elaborate swirls on the serifs. These typefaces are based on early manuscript writing -- in fact, blackletters were used in Gutenberg's Bible, one of the first books ever printed in Europe. They were much more popular before 1500 than they are today.

As you can tell, blackletters are pretty hard to read, which is why they're not typically used for body type. You'll usually see them in headers, logos, posters, and signs -- like on newspaper nameplates ( New York Times' logo, anyone?), or on the headers of certificates, diplomas, or degrees. Common blackletter fonts include Cloister Black, Deutsche Zierschrift, and Germanica.

Script

Script typefaces are based upon the varied and often fluid strokes created by handwriting. As scalable computer typefaces, characters in these scripts can now string together with one another automatically so they convincingly mimic handwriting, rather than users having to manually pick and choose which letters go after which -- which you can imagine was a painstaking process.

Under the umbrella of a script typeface, there are two basic classifications: formal and casual. Formal scripts are often reminiscent of the handwritten letterforms common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and they're used for elegant designs like invitations and diplomas, not for body copy.

Casual scripts, or informal scripts, are just that: less formal script typefaces that look more like everyday handwriting

Those are just a few examples of type classifications to give you an idea of how they work. But, since this is a blog post, not a typography course, let's move on to type families.

Type Families

The term "type family" or "typeface family" is used to describe a range of designs that are all variations of one basic typeface.

For example, you'll see that Proxima Nova has variations such as bold, extra bold, black, regular, light, light italic, and regular italic:

Sticking to a single type family will help add variation to your designs, while keeping it consistent and uniform.

Designers might use various fonts within one family to create a sense of hierarchy -- designing so that the most important elements, such as headlines and quotes, stand out above the rest of the text.

Typography Fonts

Before we wrap up here, I figured I'd leave you with a few great resources for where to find free fonts to download from the web, along with eight free ones I handpicked from these resources to get you started.

Great Resources for Free Fonts

"35 of the Best Free Fonts You Should Download": A HubSpot blog post curating 35 of the best free fonts on the internet.

Google Fonts: Hundreds of free, open-source fonts from Google that are already optimized for the web.

Behance: A great resource for finding beautiful design work, including unique fonts that are free to download.

HypeForType: Over 25,000 typography designs from top designers, many of which are available to download for free.

8 Cool Fonts That Are Free to Download

Here's one that's great for body copy. It was meant for book production, according to Google Fonts, so it's easy to read. But at the same time, there's a lot to it that makes it special: old-style figures, small caps, fleurons, and math characters and the like. It comes in three styles -- Regular, Light, and Bold -- along with the italic styles of those weights.

Harmattan is a typeface on Google Fonts that was actually originally intended to suit Arabic scripts, but it also looks great on Latin characters -- and would love attractive in either headline or body copy.

Torcao is a unique combination of letters that are "half square, half circle," robust and technical while at the same time, light-hearted and inviting. It a great headline typeface, but it still quite legible in longer text. The family comes in nine weights (slender to black) and has both condensed and extender selections for a complete set of forty-eight fonts.

This free brush font posted on Behance is great for commercial materials like social media images and flyers. It's a Lite version of the designer's "Full King Basil," and it contains many swashes and connecting letters that make for a beautiful, script-like font.

Merriweather was designed to be a typeface that's pleasant and easy to read on screens, making it perfect for a web asset like your homepage or blog. It's an evolving project on Google Fonts and will be updated, but right now, you'll find four styles -- Regular, Light, Bold, and Black -- along with the italic styles of those weights

Poiret One is a long-time favorite of mine. It's described on Google Fonts as "a fresh, decorative, geometric grotesque with a hint of Art Deco and constructivism." It's sleek, simple, decorative, and great for short texts. Try it on large signs, labels, posters, T-shirts, titles, or headlines.

A vintage-inspired headline typeface from HypeForType with sixteen different styles and a monoline script. It also includes free labels and extras like wild animals, numbers, symbols, tools, and other icons. True North comes with labels, extras and free banners. Extras include wild animals, catchwords, numbers, symbols, tools, maple leaves and trees. True North is a headline font with alternate capitals.

Here's a cool free font posted on Behance created by a professional font creator who was kind enough to accompany the free download with the mockups below. These mockups show folks how they can play around with the font in their own designs. It comes in capital letters and numbers only, and is great for headlines or social media images like the ones below.

Of course, there's always more you could learn when it comes to typography. When graphic designers get a degree, they usually have to go through several rounds of typography courses to become a professional.

But now you know some key terms to get you started and -- at the very least -- you'll be able to sound super smart when talking to your designer friends.

Want more typography tips? Check out this post on the relationship between fonts and feelings.
Editor's Note: This post was originally published in June 2014 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

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Typography Tutorial for Beginners: Everything You Need to Learn Typography Basics

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Take your DIY design skills to the next level by getting a crash course in typography.

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One of Latin America's greatest postwar artists, he wanted shifting and shimmering color to be experienced as intensely as cold or heat.

Carlos Cruz-Diez in his workshop in Paris in 2018. He chose abstraction over social realist paintings that depicted, as he put it, "poverty and social problems (which I couldn't solve) for rich people to collect." Credit... Atelier Cruz-Diez and Adagp, Paris; Lisa Preud'homme

His family announced his death on his website.

Mr. Cruz-Diez, who was from Venezuela, where he was addressed as "maestro" and where a museum in Caracas bears his name, achieved international renown early in his career in 1960s Paris.

He also completed many large-scale public installations at sites around the world, including the Simón Bolívar International Airport near Caracas, the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines railway platform outside Paris and the walkway to Marlins Park, the baseball stadium in Miami.

Building on chromatic experiments by Sir Isaac Newton, the Impressionists and the artist and educator Josef Albers, among others, Mr. Cruz-Diez devised relief paintings of multicolored cardboard or Plexiglas strips that appear to vibrate as the viewer moves past them. These works, which he called "physichromies," dating to the 1960s, were included in many exhibitions of Op Art and Kinetic Art, including MoMA's movement-defining but critically lambasted 1965 group show "The Responsive Eye."

Mr. Cruz-Diez's interest in "launching color into space," as he once wrote, and his desire to create accessible interactive environments, have influenced many younger artists, like Olafur Eliasson, Tauba Auerbach and Ivan Navarro. They share Mr. Cruz-Diez's interest in "light and color as a sensorial experience," Estrellita Brodsky, a collector, philanthropist, curator and advocate of Latin American art, wrote in an email. (She organized the Americas Society exhibition.)

Mr. Cruz-Diez was well aware of this visceral, public-facing aspect of his legacy.

"It is only now, happily, that people are realizing that a great number of the art movements of the last 30 or 40 years come out of kineticism," he told Ms. Brodsky in a 2010 interview in Bomb magazine. "Installation art, conceptual art, participatory art, interactive art, happenings, street art - we did all those things.

Carlos Eduardo Cruz-Diez was born in Caracas on Aug. 17, 1923, to Mariana Adelaida Diez de Cruz and Carlos Eduardo Cruz-Lander, during the latter years of the dictator Juan Vicente Gomez 's long rule. Mr. Cruz-Diez spoke of his father as a poet and intellectual who made his living at a soft-drink factory; both parents, he said, were supportive of his art career.

He attended the School of Visual Arts and Applied Arts in Caracas, where he befriended Alejandro Otero and Jesús Rafael Soto, who would become his peers in geometric abstraction and the Op and Kinetic Art movements, respectively.

Mr. Cruz-Diez was increasingly drawn to abstraction and to the idea of developing his own movement or language, as Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian had done. But that seemed impossible in Venezuela, which was under another military dictatorship, that of Marcos Pérez Jiménez.

And in recent years, as Venezuelans by the millions have sought refuge from economic collapse and authoritarian rule, Mr. Cruz-Diez's installation at Simón Bolívar airport has become a site of mourning and transition for people fleeing the country. (It has also become a popular image in social media posts, many showing feet planted on the work's zigzagging bands of tiles.)

In a biographical video on his foundation's website, Cruz-Diez said: "I don't make paintings, nor sculptures. I make platforms for occurrences. They are platforms where color is being produced, dissolved, generated in a perpetual instant. In it there's no notion of past nor future. In it is the notion of the present moment, just like life."

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Carlos Cruz-Diez, Whose Art Made Color Move, Is Dead at 95

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One of Latin America's greatest postwar artists, he wanted shifting and shimmering color to be experienced as intensely as cold or heat. His family announced his death on his website. Mr. Cruz-Diez, who was from Venezuela, where he was addressed as "maestro" and where a museum in Caracas bears his name, achieved international renown early in his career in 1960s Paris.

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Interactive sculpture, which changes based upon your perspective | Ortega, The incredibles, Sculptures

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Feb 13, 2012 - Damián Ortega creates mind-blowing sculptures suspended in mid-air. His breakout hit, called Cosmic Thing, was created in 2002 and featured in the Ve...

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Perspective from ArtClubBlog. This art project shows kids how perspective changes based on distance or viewi... | Homeschool art, School art projects, Perspective art

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Jun 10, 2013 - I recently attended OCAD University's annual Grad Show, which is always brimming with interesting ideas. This time, I came away intrigued by Iris Fong's look at perspective, and thought it would be an excellent way for children to see how perspective changes, based on your relative distance or position.

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Kinetic art - Optical illusion kinetic sculpture that seems to move in impossible ways.

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Currents is the third studio album by Australian musical project Tame Impala. It was released on 17 July 2015 by Modular Recordings and Universal Music Australia. In the United States it was released by Interscope Records and Fiction Records, while Caroline International released it in other international regions. Like the group's previous two albums, Currents was written, recorded, performed, and produced by primary member Kevin Parker. For the first time, Parker mixed the music and recorded all instruments by himself; the album featured no other collaborators.

After the release of the group's previous album, (2012), Parker began work on Currents, largely recording at his home studio in Fremantle. He engrossed himself with writing and recording, and in keeping with his reputation as a musical auteur, laboured over the details of each song, ultimately causing the release date to be delayed by two months. In contrast to the psychedelic rock sound of the project's prior work, Currents marks a shift to more dance-oriented music, with more emphasis placed on synthesisers than guitars. Parker was inspired to seek a change out of desire to hear Tame Impala's music played in dance clubs and a more communal setting. Thematically, the record is about the process of personal transformation, which many critics interpreted to be the result of a romantic break-up. The album's cover art depicting vortex shedding is a visualisation of these themes.

Currents was preceded by the release of the singles " Let It Happen", "'Cause I'm a Man" and " Eventually". The album became the group's best charting release, debuting at number one in Australia, number three in the United Kingdom, and at number four in the United States. Currents has sold over 120,000 copies in North America as of December 2015. Like its predecessors, the album received critical acclaim, and appeared on various critics' year-end lists of the best albums of 2015. At the 2015 ARIA Music Awards, Currents was awarded Best Rock Album and Album of the Year, while at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards, it was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album.

At the J Awards of 2015, the album was nominated for Australian Album of the Year.

Tame Impala emerged in the early 2010s as one of psychedelic rock's most prominent new acts. The group, fronted by musician Kevin Parker, released two albums that received adoration from music critics: Innerspeaker (2010) and (2012). " Elephant" became an alt-rock radio hit, and was placed in several television series and commercials. Parker founded the band and is typically the sole operating member in the studio. In between Tame Impala releases, Parker founded the space disco band AAA Aardvark Getdown Services.

He began writing songs shortly after completing Lonerism, but was unable to specify when the album began to take shape: "There's never really a start and never really an end either." The idea to compile his songs into an album came when he had between 10-20 songs ready. In May 2014, Parker spoke of his growing inclination toward recording the album in a triple J radio interview, explaining that: "I'm getting more and more sucked into the world of making an album. It's weird how it happens naturally, it's almost feels like a seasonal thing. I've started to think about tracklistings and all the things that come with an album."

The album's change in style has root in several events. Parker began to feel that even songs outside the psychedelic genre could possess its qualities; he made this assumption while under the influence of psychedelic mushrooms and cocaine and listening to the Bee Gees' " Stayin' Alive". At some point, Parker broke up with his girlfriend, French singer-songwriter Melody Prochet, and moved from Paris back to his hometown of Perth. According to Parker, "the only rule was to make an attempt to abandon the rules that I've set up in the past." This included toying with things he considered musically "cheesy" or taboo, including drum machines and various effects.

Currents was recorded, produced, and mixed by Kevin Parker at his beachside home studio in Fremantle, Western Australia. The two-room studio contained a minimal amount of equipment: "a ramshackle drum kit, a guitar covered in duct tape and some battered vintage synths." Parker likened his small setup to an aeroplane cockpit. In an adjoining room, he began designing the light show that would accompany live performances of the album by using automated stage lights on stands. He hoped to deviate from the creative process by which he created Lonerism, which he described as torturous, but ultimately found himself "falling down completely the same hole again" on Currents.

Recording the album soon became an obsession to Parker, as he worked "all day, every day," growing increasingly isolated. He said, "At some point, life outside the studio fades into the distance. That's how I know that I'm into it." He reasoned that any alternate approach would imply that the music was not powerful enough. writer Corban Goble described Parker's daily routine in an article shortly preceding the album's release: "During the making of an album, the 29-year-old generally likes to rise around midday and then work, slowly and methodically, late into the night while drinking and smoking." Parker contended this approach helped his writing, noting, "Things flow easier [after a few drinks] - the flow is the most important thing for me for recording." He also often went swimming during breaks, which he dubbed "the ultimate purifier." He followed a mantra of "give the song what it deserves," which entailed creating music without "any sensible or logical decisions." Parker recorded dozens of vocals takes; according to him, for one song, he performed over 1,056 partial vocal takes. For one week, he rented another house located four hours south of Perth-the same one where he recorded Innerspeaker -to brainstorm drum ideas for songs.

The decision to exert control in every aspect of production aside from mastering came from obsession. He said, "I felt like, this way the album is even more my heart and soul, my blood, sweat, and tears." Parker set a deadline to complete the record because of his tendency to procrastinate; he described having a deadline as "a blessing in disguise because it forces you to make decisions there and then. Which in the end makes for good art." Currents was due to be completed in January 2015, but the deadline was pushed back several times. Late in the process, he became self-conscious about the honesty of his lyrics. He became obsessive about minor details in the work, making him unable to wholly enjoy it upon its completion. Shortly before its release, he said, "I still think this album is completely unlistenable."

Currents features styles of psychedelic pop, disco, R&B, and electropop, but the album's chord progressions and rhythms are most indebted to R&B. Kevin Parker listened to R&B from the 1990s during recording, which he had forced himself to reject while growing up due to peer pressures. He said, "Music guys aren't allowed to be into R&B when they are teenagers because all the teenybopper kids blast that shit in their cars." As such, learning to let go of preconceptions and embracing the music felt liberating to him. He had previously refrained from making his music more pop-oriented because he thought "indie-music snobs would turn their nose up at it," and he discovered that writing pure pop music was a challenge. Parker attributed his openness on Currents to producer Mark Ronson, whose album Uptown Special he collaborated on.

Many of the songs were composed over several years, both in the studio and on the road. Parker saved ideas using a voice recorder on his phone, and wrote many songs on a drum machine. Guitars are present in every song on Currents, but are used to accompany and answer other instruments. This was partially due to his gear being inaccessible: "We'd finish one tour in say, Europe, go home for two weeks, and all our gear, including my guitars and pedals, would be on their way to South America." He had a larger array of synthesizers at his home studio, which allowed them to become the prominent instrument. He said, "It's really just whatever is sitting around when I think of the song." The album incorporates Parker's falsetto, as well as a vocoder.

The lyrical themes of Currents centre on personal transition and growing older. Parker's lyrics on the album are entirely autobiographical. His vocals are clearer and less affected than in prior Tame Impala releases, which is partially owed to him having more pride in his lyrics; he said he hoped it would be easy for listeners to understand them. Parker considered the primary theme of the album to be a "deep feeling of transition in your psyche," or, in a broad sense, fully entering adulthood. He began learning about the concept of the Saturn return halfway through the recording process, which explained his feelings of reflection. He said, "I was halfway through making the album when I heard about it, and it gave what I was doing a lot more meaning; suddenly things made a lot more sense." Accordingly, on the album his reaction to transition is acceptance, exemplified by the opening song, "Let It Happen". Parker also felt buying the home where he recorded Currents "really changed my perspective about where I saw myself, like a place that I belonged."

Currents has also been frequently characterised as a breakup album. Prior to recording, Parker made the decision to break up with French singer-songwriter Melody Prochet. Several songs on the album examine it from his angle as the instigator of the breakup, which consists of guilt and self-questioning. Parker downplayed the notion that the album was entirely aimed at former lovers, however, and likened it to an inner monologue: "It's really me talking to myself, another part of myself... to my old self, the part of me that resists change and wants me to stay as I am." For Parker, the album meant "looking forward and a sudden adoption of confidence." The album's title reflects this, with currents being "these unstoppable forces; the parts of you that are trying to change you."

" Let It Happen" opens the album, and is about "finding yourself always in this world of chaos and all this stuff going on around you and always shutting it out because you don't want to be part of it. But at some point, you realise it takes more energy to shut it out than it does to let it happen and be a part of 'it'." At one point, the song begins to skip, reminiscent of a skipping compact disc. Parker included this as an extension of his fascination with glitches in playback. "Nangs" has been noted for its interlude-like composition and its woozy, psychedelic sound. "Yes I'm Changing" is a song Parker claims he does not remember making: "A weird experience, because it was like it was someone else made the song. I had no memory of imagining it." " Eventually" concerns "knowing that you're about to damage someone almost irreparably, and the only consolation you get is this distant hope that they'll be alright eventually, because you know they aren't going to be now or soon." Parker conceded that he "can't really deny" it is a breakup song.

Parker stated that " The Less I Know the Better" "shouldn't be on a Tame Impala album because it has this dorky, white disco funk." "'Cause I'm a Man" attracted controversy upon its release due to perceived sexism in its lyrics, but Parker meant the opposite: "The song is about how weak men are basically, and how we make all these excuses." "New Person, Same Old Mistakes" closes the record, and expresses self-doubt. Parker said, "The last song is meant to sound like the final battle between optimism and pessimism, a confrontation between the side of you that wants to progress and the side of you that wants to stay the same."

The album's promotional cycle began when lead single "Let It Happen" was released as a free download on 10 March 2015. One day later, Parker was in New York for a mastering session with engineer Greg Calbi. The album was originally set to be released in May 2015, capitalizing on the group's appearance at Coachella. But as the album neared mastering, Parker was not yet done with lyrics for two songs. His perfectionism led to the album's release date being pushed back to July. In the interim, three more singles were released: "'Cause I'm a Man" and "Disciples" in April during a Reddit AMA, and "Eventually" in May. Due to the album's delay, Chris DeVille at Stereogum noted that "about a third of the record [had] gone public already" by the time it was released.

In October 2017, a "collector's edition" of Currents was announced. The release includes three B-sides and two remixes, and was released on 17 November.

The cover art for Currents and its accompanying singles were created by Kentucky-based artist and musician Robert Beatty. Kevin Parker has said Currents' designs are based on a diagram of vortex shedding he remembered while trying to visualise the album's themes. Beatty described how Parker's ideas for the album artwork "were all based on turbulent flow, the way liquid or air flows around objects."

Currents received acclaim from music critics. On Metacritic, the album holds an average critic score of 84, based on 38 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Ian Cohen of gave the album a "Best New Music" designation, saying, "Nearly every proper song on Currents is a revelatory statement of Parker's range and increasing expertise as a producer, arranger, songwriter, and vocalist while maintaining the essence of Tame Impala". Cohen compared the record to others such as , , and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, writing, "it's the result of a supernaturally talented obsessive trying to perfect music while redefining their relationship to album-oriented rock." 's Harley Brown called it "the purest - and most complex - distillation of everything that makes the band such a nearly physical pleasure to listen to". Brown added, "The real magic of Currents, though, is in how Parker so effectively (and genuinely, for the most part) manipulates the listener's emotions without necessarily revealing any himself." Alex Denney of praised Parker for his musical transition, writing, "Fuzzed-out guitars simply aren't where Parker's head is at now, which strikes us as a fair trade-off from a producer pushing at the outer reaches of his talent."

Alexis Petridis of The Guardian wrote "A lot of the album's power and strangeness comes from the way [the lyrics] cut against the lusciousness of the arrangements... and the loveliness of the melodies." He praised Parker for creating psychedelia by leaving the listener "simultaneously baffled and intrigued", rather than resorting to clichéd psychedelic music effects. Darren Levin of Rolling Stone Australia said "the first thing that really strikes you about Currents is how hi-fi it actually is", and that after listening to the opening track, "you really do get the feeling you're watching one of rock's most restlessly creative minds at work". He concluded his review, "For someone who once sang 'Feels like we only go backwards', moving forward seems like Kevin Parker's only preoccupation right now." Levin was one of many reviewers to compare the album to Daft Punk's 2013 record Random Access Memories. Jon Pareles of The New York Times said that like their first two albums, "The core of Tame Impala is its aura of solitude". He called Currents "a tour de force for the songwriter and his gizmos. But it's also decidedly hermetic, nearly airless." Andy Gill of The Independent said, "while copious application of phasing offers a link to Tame Impala's psychedelic roots, the absence of guitar wig-outs may disappoint some fans".

Currents appeared on several critics' lists of the best albums of 2015. named Currents the year's top album, saying that "Parker added dancefloor pop to their kaleidoscopic sound" while calling it "sonically advanced and filled with great songs". ranked it as the year's fourth-best, calling it the group's "best because its soul actually lies in Motown". The magazine said the album finds Parker "coming to the epiphany that no amount of pitch- and time-shifting will screw with your perception of reality as much as a lyric that's as direct and true as 'They say people never change but that's bullshit / They do.'" also ranked the record as fourth-best of the year. ranked the album as the year's fifth-best, saying, "There's still a bit of Parker's elegant guitar here, but he's mostly rerouted his perfectionistic craftsmanship to synthesizer tones and drum programming." ranked Currents at number eight on its list of the year's best albums, calling it a "near-perfect album" and "a superb progression from their last efforts, a study in internal consistency." Rolling Stone placed the album at number 13 on its list of the "50 Best Albums of 2015", writing that Parker's "musical rethink... is expansive, resulting in wide-screen adventures like 'Let It Happen'" and that the record is "full of weightless vocals and synthesized funk, for a set that's both blissed-out and mournful, like a set of diary entries from an astronaut floating off into oblivion". The album was also ranked fifth-best of the year by Consequence of Sound and , 15th-best by Stereogum, and 22nd-best by PopMatters, while named it the eighth-best pop/rock album of the year.

At the 2015 ARIA Music Awards, Currents was awarded Best Rock Album and Album of the Year, and "Let It Happen" was nominated for Best Pop Release. At the same event, Parker won for Engineer of the Year and Producer of the Year for his work on Currents, and Tame Impala were named Best Group. The album was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards.

Currents debuted at number one in Australia, the group's first album to top the charts in their native country. It debuted at number three in the United Kingdom, becoming Tame Impala's first top-ten album in the country. In the United States, the album debuted at number four on the Billboard 200, moving 50,000 "equivalent album units" in its first week, 45,000 of which were sales; it was the group's first top-ten entry on the chart. The record debuted well on other Billboard charts, entering the Alternative Albums chart and Vinyl Albums chart at number one, and the Top Rock Albums chart at number two; first-week sales of vinyl copies in the US totaled 14,000, the highest for any album in a single week in the US since Jack White's more than a year prior. As of December 2015, 120,000 copies of Currents have sold in North America. In September 2015, the UK's Official Charts Company announced the creation of a new monthly chart called the Official Progressive Albums Chart, and that Currents would be its first number-one album.

Barbadian singer and songwriter Rihanna covered "New Person, Same Old Mistakes" for her 8th studio album under the title "Same Ol' Mistakes". It consists of Tame Impala's instrumental, extended to a length of 6 minutes and 35 seconds, with Rihanna's vocal replacing Parker's.

All tracks are written by Kevin Parker.

Tame Impala

Kevin Parker - songwriting, performance, production, recording, mixing, cover concept

Technical

Rob Grant - additional recording, mix advice

Greg Calbi - mastering

Artwork

Robert Beatty - artwork and design

Matthew C. Saville - photography

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Currents is the third studio album by Australian musical project Tame Impala. It was released on 17 July 2015 by Modular Recordings and Universal Music Australia. In the United States it was released by Interscope Records and Fiction Records, while Caroline International released it in other international regions.

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When two very similar grids with light and dark elements overlap, new sinuous patterns emerge that seem to shimmer and flow. Whether you're into art or science, engineering or fashion, you have probably seen or at least heard of these moiré patterns. The name moiré (pronounced mwa-ray) is etymologically related to the French word for mohair and entered the language centuries ago, describing rippled or watered fabrics. Today, moiré patterns are seen not only in visual fields such as optics, art, photography and color printing, but also in seemingly far-flung areas like marine engineering and the detection of forged banknotes.

Recently, moiré effects have also entered the quantum realm in a big way, as David H. Freedman reported in his Quanta article " With a Simple Twist, a 'Magic' Material Is Now the Big Thing in Physics." Freedman highlights a stunning discovery made by the experimental physicist Pablo Jarillo-Herrero and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: When a layer of graphene, a sheet of carbon crystal with atoms arranged in a hexagonal one-atom-thick lattice, is dropped on another one and rotated to just the correct angle of about 1.1 degrees, the graphene magically acquires the ability to become superconductive when the requisite number of electrons are added. That interesting things would happen at around this magic angle had been mathematically predicted by the theorists Rafi Bistritzer and Allan H. MacDonald, both then at the University of Texas, Austin. In fact, Jarillo-Herrero's team made their discovery while trying to create graphene twists that matched a bunch of magic rotation angles from this earlier prediction, including 1.05 degrees, 0.5 degrees and 0.24 degrees.

Why does rotated graphene exhibit this behavior? (Hint: It has something to do with moiré patterns.) The figure depicts what two layers of carbon atoms might look like when arranged in a hexagonal lattice. The second layer is slightly rotated, and the skewed overlap between the two creates a larger hexagonal moiré pattern (outlined in blue). This large hexagonal superlattice enables large numbers of electrons to interact, with interesting results, especially when the layers are rotated at specific angles at which, apparently, quantum tunneling can occur. The large moiré pattern of the superlattice is both visually striking and electrically special, as the emergence of superconductivity shows. Superconductivity is a state that exhibits quantum behavior macroscopically, allowing electric currents to circulate indefinitely without any resistance whatsoever. This concordance between the visual and the electrical in graphene almost seems to be an example of life imitating art right down to the quantum level. This discovery has sparked an explosion of interest in a new subfield of materials science, which has been dubbed "twistronics."

The exact reason why specific angles produce the observed quantum effects is an active area of research in graphene twistronics. The answer depends on the details of atomic spacing and complex calculations of electron interaction and quantum tunneling; Freedman's follow-up blog post " What's the Magic Behind Graphene's 'Magic' Angle? " offers an update on this subject. For this puzzle, we'll focus on the geometry of how moiré visual effects arise and how factors such as the periods of and discrepancy between the two grids affect the size of the resulting moiré pattern.

Before we get to the puzzle questions, it's worth noting that these patterns are inherently dynamic, and static pictures do not do them justice. Hence, the easiest and most enjoyable way to explore moiré patterns is to sit back and watch one of the many excellent moiré videos, such as this one, which gives us a feel for how patterns evolve and how surprises abound when we're dealing with moiré effects:

Problem 1

Let's start with the simplest example of how two similar patterns interfere with each other - the phenomenon of acoustic beats. In this case, the two interfering patterns are sound waves (mathematically, sine waves) of slightly different frequencies, which together produce the acoustically dominant recurring beat pattern at a frequency that is the difference between the two original frequencies.

As you can see in the figure, the waxing and waning of the beats is caused by the fact that the original sine waves are in phase in the middle of the beat, which makes them reinforce each other, and out of phase between the beats, which makes them cancel each other out. Assuming that the original frequencies are centered around 500 hertz, try to fill in the following table.

Notice that as the differences between the frequencies diminish, the beats grow longer in duration.

This kind of sine wave interference is also seen in two-dimensional artistic patterns of the kind generated by spirographs. Here, for instance, is a figure generated by Quanta reader James M. in response to one of our first Insights puzzles, " How to Create Art With Mathematics." In this pattern, the interference between sine waves of frequencies 104 (large loops) and 101 (small loops) generates a three-sided figure that visually highlights the beat phenomenon. Once again, it's the small difference in frequencies that determines the characteristics of the larger pattern. (The actual parametric formula that generated the figure is cos( t) + cos(105 t)/2 + sin(100 t)/3, sin( t) + sin(105 t)/2 + cos(100 t)/3. If you're wondering why the two numbers I mentioned are slightly different from these, check out the solution column for that puzzle.)

Problem 2

Now let's move from beats to line moiré patterns. Here the waxing and waning of the beats is replaced by patterns of light and dark lines. Notice that the light and dark areas in the moiré pattern are much larger than the original dark and light lines, much like the acoustic beat durations and the large hexagons in the graphene.

Assume that the distance from the center of one dark line to the next in the square on the upper right is 10 units. What is the distance between the centers of the dark areas in the moiré pattern if the corresponding distance between lines in the lower left square is a) 12 units or b) 11 units?

Once again, a smaller difference between the interfering patterns produces a larger grain in the moiré pattern.

Problem 3

When we move to moiré patterns caused by rotation, the two overlapping patterns can be absolutely identical. The misalignment that was caused in the previous cases by a difference in frequency or distance now comes from the fact that one of the patterns is rotated. The approximate scale of the moiré pattern is inversely proportional to the angle of rotation. The smaller the angle, the larger the moiré pattern.

You can see this very clearly in this video, which shows the moiré patterns for overlapping graphene sheets rotated between 0 and 30 degrees:

Try stepping through the video manually or in slow motion to get a feel for how the pattern evolves and how the moiré hexagons shrink in size as the angle increases. Or you can step backward and see how the hexagons increase as the rotation angle decreases. Here are the images for rotations of 8.8 degrees, 4.4 degrees, 2.2 degrees and 1.1 degrees.

As you can see, at 8.8 degrees the moiré pattern that emerges has a central superlattice hexagon surrounded by six others of the same size, similar to the ones outlined in blue in the first figure above. Each of these moiré hexagons occupies about a quarter to a third of the entire hexagonal field in each direction. At 4.4 degrees, the central superlattice hexagon expands to about twice its previous size, covering about one-half to two-thirds of the entire field. At 2.2 degrees, the central superlattice hexagon covers the entire original bounding hexagon. When you halve the angle one more time to 1.1 degrees, the angle that produces the interesting effects in graphene, the superlattice seems to have disappeared completely and the pattern looks almost like a single sheet without any moiré. Or does it? What do you think has happened to the large moiré superlattice at this angle? What happens when you halve the angle again a few more times to match some of the even smaller angle predictions?

Problem 4

When you advance the angle in the rotation video above, you notice that moiré patterns change in a smooth and continuous manner. The superlattice hexagons get smaller and more numerous, and their size varies continuously with the angle. However, the electron tunneling phenomenon is discrete and recurs periodically at specific angles only. Can you venture an entirely geometric explanation of how the seemingly continuous rotation profile could possibly produce a discrete physical phenomenon that only recurs periodically? It might help to look at the Problem 1 scenario again. (After all, particles are waves too.)

That's it for now. We've dissected the geometry of moiré patterns, but let's not forget how beautiful and artistic they are. Now that we have explored some moiré science, let's take a look at moiré art. I encourage readers to post links to their favorite moiré patterns and briefly describe why they like them.

While we're at it, let's also have a poetry challenge. Come up with your best couplets to explain the graphene story while parodying Dean Martin's signature song "That's Amore," replacing those words, of course, with "That's a Moiré." Here's one to start you off.
When two grids make fine art, and in science play a part, that's a moiré!
Here's wishing you a happy and creative fusion of art and science, and happy puzzling.

Editor's note: The reader who submits the most interesting, creative or insightful solution (as judged by the columnist) in the comments section will receive a Quanta Magazine T-shirt or one of the two new Quanta books, Alice and Bob Meet the Wall of Fire or The Prime Number Conspiracy (winner's choice). And if you'd like to suggest a favorite puzzle for a future Insights column, submit it as a comment below, clearly marked "NEW PUZZLE SUGGESTION." (It will not appear online, so solutions to the puzzle above should be submitted separately.)
Note that we may hold comments for the first day or two to allow for independent contributions by readers.

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How to Turn a Quantum Computer Into the Ultimate Randomness Generator

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When Magic Is Seen in Twisted Graphene, That's a Moiré

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When two very similar grids with light and dark elements overlap, new sinuous patterns emerge that seem to shimmer and flow. Whether you're into art or science, engineering or fashion, you have probably seen or at least heard of these moiré patterns.

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Julio Le Parc: Light - Mirror | Art in Hong Kong

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Friendly warning! We're working hard to be accurate. But these are unusual times, so please check that events are still happening. A major and influential figure within the kinetic and op art movement, Julio Le Parc is hugely interested in what art could do by inviting the participation of the public.

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Here, in this piece by Vasarely, different colored marble plates have been arranged in order to create a three-dimensional shape. This has been achieved through an optical illusion, which is not the first of its kind. So what are the origins of this innovative style?

Optical illusions and three-dimensional shapes can be dated as far back to Pompeii, at the Casa del Fauno. When it was excavated in the 1830s, a floor mosaic that plays on optical illusions was discovered by archeologists.

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Dating back even further, mosaics from the Ancient Greek city of Corinth featured geometric patterns which are not unlike Vasarely et al Op art of the 1960s.

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In the 18th century through to modern day, using marble for both it's strength as a material as well as its aesthetic qualities became a trend in Western interior design.

Just goes to show, nothing is truly an original...

All pieces featured will be part of Wannenes sale on March 7 and 8, 2017. Previews will take place from March 3-6. Ceramics, glass, Old Masters and 19th paintings will all be featured in the auction. Check out the full catalog here.

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How the Ancient Greeks came up with 1960s Op Art

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In the 1960s a new stylistic direction in art, known as OP art emerged. This new art form perplexed and enchanted viewers, as one work of art offered more than one perspective, depending on the positioning of the viewer's gaze. Out of this style came names such as Victor Vasarely, Carlos Cruz-Diez and Günther Uecker.

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This week the art world lost a pioneer of Op and Kinetic Art in Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez, who died at the age of 95 in Paris. His vibrant paintings and installations that shaped a movement and can be found around the world in museums and as public art.

Born in Caracas, as a young artist Cruz-Diez found himself bored by the prevalent Abstract Expressionism of the era. In his search to create something more dynamic, he began adhering strips of plastic to cardboard, creating abstract compositions that gave the impression of movement. Bringing the illusion of three-dimension to the two-dimensional pushed the boundaries of the canvas and how we define painting.

This combination of optical illusion and color theory would become known as Kinetic Art. Cruz-Diez would eventually work on aluminum, and his practice would expand to include massive installations called "Chromosaturations," using neon lights to flood a space with intense color.

Throughout his career, Cruz-Diez immersed audiences in a world of color, inviting us to experience the visual world in a new way. His own interests in the ever-changing qualities of light and color, through his work, are contagious, and help us understand the limitations and boundlessness of our own perceptions.

Here are eight works from the late Carlos Cruz-Diez that celebrate color, from large installations to modest canvases.

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8 Mesmerizing Op Art Works from Carlos Cruz-Diez | Art & Object

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This week the art world lost a pioneer of Op and Kinetic Art in Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez, who died at the age of 95 in Paris. His vibrant paintings and installations that shaped a movement and can be found around the world in museums and as public art.

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Op Art movement has been raising some of the most important questions in contemporary art. Maybe this statement might sound as an exaggeration, but the fact is that Op Art movement deals with one of the most fundamental elements of art practice - the perception of the visual. Logically, the natures of perception, illusions and optical effects have been intriguing the artists and art enthusiasts for centuries. However, the developments within the fields of psychology, contemporary philosophy as well as the technological development in the 20th Century put these issues in the very center of many artists' interests. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Op Art movement (or Optical art movement) was born in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Questioning the reality and the possibilities of visual perception - those issues have been central to the op art practice since its pioneers.

Op Art Movement is Sometimes Linked with Postmodernism, but There is No Clear Connection Between These Two Movements

Heinz Mack

The Early History of Op Art Movement

There are many different interpretations of the origins of the Op Art movement. The antecedents of Op art, in terms of graphic and color effects, can be traced back to Neo-impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism and Dada. On the other hand, some experts argue that the style represented a kind of abstract Pop art. Hoverer, it was actually the Time Magazine that coined phrase Optical Art, or Op Art, back in 1964. The term referenced the fact that Op Art is comprised of illusion, and often appears - to the human eye - to be moving or breathing due to its precise, mathematically-based composition. Op Art actually emerged from the work of Victor Vasarely, who first explored unusual perceptual effects in some designs from the 1930s. Vasarely is perceived as a father of the Op Art movement, since his complex patterns actively engage the viewer's eye, and convey a sense of kinetic energy across the two-dimensional surface. The pinnacle of the movement's success was 1965, when the Museum of Modern Art embraced the style with the exhibition The Responsive Eye, which showcased 123 paintings and sculptures by artists such as Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, Frank Stella, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Jesus-Rafael Soto, and Josef Albers.

Black and White Patterns, Videos and Kinetic Art Are Inherently Linked with Op Ar

Victor Vasarely - Cube,1970; Biadan, 1959

Visual Illusions

Op Art movement is interested in exploring the variety of optical phenomena. Subjects do not matter; everything is about perception and behavior of the eye. The beginnings of the movement saw only black and white compositions in order to produce the greatest contrast in their designs, since this contrast causes the greatest confusion for the eye, which struggles to discern which element of the composition is in the foreground and which in the background. So, in a viewer's eye, it usually appears that the composition is actually a moving image - the foreground is constantly changing, causing an illusion in a viewer's perception.

Op Artists Playing with the Viewer's Perceptions

Jesús Rafael Soto

Notable Op Artists and Later Developments

Op Art movement should not be reduced to back and white compositions that make illusionist perceptions in a viewer's eye. Other artists, such as Julian Stanczak and Richard Anuszkiewicz, were always interested in making color the primary focus of their work (for example, Anuszkiewicz's or ). The colorist work is dominated by the same concerns of figure-ground movement, but they have the added element of contrasting colors that produce different effects on the eye. For instance, in Anuszkiewicz's "temple" paintings, the juxtaposition of two highly contrasting colors provokes a sense of depth in illusionistic three-dimensional space so that it appears as if the architectural shape is invading the viewer's space. There are also many other great Op Artists, many of them using Kinetic art as well, in their practice. Some notable Op Artists are: Getulio Alviani, , Marina Apollonio and many others.

Op Art Can Be Created in a Variety of Artistic Media

Victor Vasarely - Zebra,1938

Is Op Art Still Popular?

Although Op Art has significantly lost on its popularity in the latest years, the artworks by Op Artists are still quite popular among collectors and art lovers. Many art critics argue that there are less Op Artists today because the products of this art movement have been commercialized - Op Art elements have been translated into posters, t-shirts and book illustrations. Also, some critics and audiences are denouncing Op Art as an art movement, stating that it is nothing more than tricks of the eye. However, Op Art movement and Op Artists are still very productive, and the artworks that challenge the visual perception of the human eye are still being very attractive to general public. Therefore, it is almost impossible to follow the latest developments in contemporary art, without having in mind the latest trends within the field of the Op Art movement.

Sign up for My Widewalls for free, and follow the news about developments in contemporary art!

Featured Images:

Linda Besemer - Big Corner Bulge, 2008

Tauba Auerbach

All Images used for illustrative purposes only.

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The Significance of the Op Art Movement | Widewalls

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Op Art movement has been raising some of the most important questions in contemporary art. Maybe this statement might sound as an exaggeration, but the fact is that Op Art movement deals with one of the most fundamental elements of art practice - the perception of the visual.

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Op art wavy rotary movement - Optical Illusions (Op Art) Coloring Pages for Adults - Just Color

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Op art wavy rotary movement - Optical illusion : Wavy Rotary movement. From the gallery : Op Art. Artist : Troyka. Just Color : Discover all our printable Coloring Pages for Adults, to print or download for free !

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"Op art abstract design." by troyka - Mostphotos

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Sell your images on Mostphotos - it's free and you get 50% of each sale! Get started in a few clicks.