Vasarely in black and white, return on his Bi-Forme work

Victor Vasarely (1906-1997), a French artist of Hungarian origin, is considered the father of optical art (Op Art). After discovering abstract art and the Russian constructivists and being taught at the Bauhaus, he wanted to create, during his career, an art that was accessible and within everyone's reach by using ingenuity in its modes of production and distribution.

In 1955, Vasarely wrote his Yellow Manifesto and thus marked the official act of the birth of cinetism. He wrote this manifesto on the occasion of the famous exhibition "Le Mouvement" at the Denise René Gallery, which had dedicated its very first exhibition to him. This manifesto establishes the integration of movement through the stimulation of the spectator and through the manipulation of the object. Kinetic art, to use the term used in 1955 by Vasarely, followed by the developments of op'art, was to impose itself for fifteen years as one of the major trends of international contemporary art. This art questioned the vibration, the virtual color, all that in the fixed image solicited the optical nerve or on the contrary introduced by the real movement a dimension of duration which modified the approach of visual arts.

From the 1950s onwards, Vasarely's abstraction was reduced to black and white. This is notably the case in the 1962 work Bi-Forme, now in the Centre Pompidou. This sculpture, made of engraved and superimposed Saint-Gobain glass panels, draws its theoretical dimension from the Yellow Manifesto. Vasarely knew how to use black and white, geometry and space to create a dynamic and kinetic work that the viewer can appropriate. The effect sought with this work is defined on the mobility and vision of the viewer.
According to the Yellow Manifesto, the integration of movement is not achieved through the manipulation of the object but through the stimulation of the viewer. This conception is translated here by the retinal dynamism of black and white. For Vasarely, this work "will become a plastic work that can be diffused, optimal and optimistic, a true common treasure". Vasarely's goal is to gather a considerable number of spectators around this work in order to transmit a message that can be received by everyone. There are as many views of the work as there are spectators and different points of view to observe it.
With this sculpture, the artist takes a step towards three-dimensionality by breaking the flatness to which he was accustomed. He explores the variations of forms, because in the same way that the chromatic nuances can vary, the forms can be seen under different angles. These optical illusions, close to a trompe-l'oeil, force the spectator to an illusion very far from reality. The sensation of disorder is thus offered by these contrasting and vibrant patterns offering an art of pure sensation. The possibilities of combinations between the forms and the bichromatism of the sculpture are almost infinite. The movement in Bi-Forme is induced without the need to provoke it. The forms seem to pass before our eyes. The work thus functions as a moving screen that occupies and animates a volumetric space filled with spectators.
Vasarely, 1967 text, reproduced in Notes brutes, p.90