RESPONSIVE EYES
2012-03-12The Responsive Eye was an exhibition held at MoMA in New York in 1965. It brought together artworks by so-called ‘Op’ and minimalist artists such as Bridget Riley, Josef Albers, Viktor Vasarely and Almir Mavignier. The curator William Seitz described the show an ‘exhibition that would indicate an activity, not a kind of art’.
In the catalogue text Seitz writes, ‘The eye responds most directly when nonessentials such as freely modulated shape and tone, brush gestures and impasto are absent.’ He argued this was ‘non-objective perceptual art‘, art that ‘exists primarily for its impact on reception rather than for conceptual examination… Ideological focus has moved from the outside world, passed through the work as object, and entered the incompletely explored region area between the cornea and the brain.’
Opposite – Paul B Davis, ‘Surviving the 90’s No.1’, 2011
Exhibition runs through to May 12th, 2012
Jacob’s Island Gallery
56 Butler’s & Colonial Wharf
10–11 Shad Thames
London
SE1 2PY
