Lying before me is a scrambled jigsaw puzzle and nestled in my hand is a puzzle piece. I am confused (it may be last nights cocktails), but I’m struggling to decipher what lies in front of me. I know that in many ways, both science and art are like jigsaw puzzles, which analyse the world in terms of its many parts. Solving a jigsaw puzzle, like solving a problem in science or art, is the ability to organise the pixel like pieces into a comprehensive and satisfying whole. I have just never been any good at jigsaws.

The jigsaw is a depiction of Victor Vasarely’s painting, ‘Majus MC,’ (fig. I), part of his ‘Planetary Folklore’ series of the 1960’s. It is a cheery and colourful composition of spatial nuances. The image is square and composed of vertical and horizontal sequences of shapes in contrasting colour combinations. The work is rather flat in appearance, with the effect of depth only occurring when a dark colour contrasts with a light one. The system underlying this work is difficult to fully grasp. The simple shapes and forms in the work are familiar to me, and yet, they seem to have been put together rather strangely, as though their final purpose is to cancel each other out. I can think of no other way to express it.

Each form appears to erase the form before it. Each colour challenges the next. Its odd, then, that the overall feeling of the composition is one of great clarity. I stare at the remaining pieces of the jigsaw puzzle wondering what is going on?

On closer inspection, however, I notice that the work is in fact based on an order, consisting of a cyclical sequence of form and colour combinations. Beginning at the centre, light green and yellow, and then the sequence forms a spiral that runs in a clockwise direction, with the same colour values repeated at certain intervals - especially the light yellow group of three squares that begins each cycle.

As I struggle with the round knob of a jigsaw piece as I try, and yet again, fail, to interlock it with another piece, I realise that Vasarely was not just an artist; he was a mathematician as well. He had analysed the geometry and topology of space, breaking it down to grid like patterns, on which he later composed his paintings. He had attempted to analyse, understand, and interpret perception, to try to understand the direct correlation of optical cause and effect. He once recalled how, as a child, he was fascinated with webs of lines, such as isobars on weather maps and the effects of motion that could be portrayed by the changing shapes of the landscape as seen from a passing train. This notion of being able to present motion and time on a flat plane was fascinating to Vasarely, and this pursuit of dynamic structures led him to explore (like any scientist) the micro – and macrostructure of the world around him, no longer visible to the naked eye. “I feel much closer to nature than any landscape painter,” he once wrote, “I confront it on the level of its internal structure, the configuration of its elements”. (Folklore Planétaire).

Faced with this jigsaw ; I am compelled to reconsider Vasarely’s art, Op art (optical art). Regardless of its numerous detractors, it is, in its best moments, a movement of keen visual and intellectual interest. Like most movements of the 1960’s, Op art, had its own politics concerning social progress. It had a direct appeal to the senses, everyone’s senses. Vasarely claimed “art as the plastic of the community”, and his ‘Yellow Manifesto’ of 1954,on the democratisation of art, remains steeped in a positive and progressive attitude towards technology, society and the spirit of art. He felt that the uniqueness of a work of art and the artist’s personal involvement in its execution were notions for the privileged. He worked in a manner that lent itself to mass production by modern technical processes. This may be regarded as a contradiction of sorts; to make art that detracts from the uniqueness of the art object. But unlike some artists, Vasarely bore no grudge against popular culture, and he never felt any conflict about his work. It wasn’t a question of compromising himself; it was simply an opportunity to reach out to larger numbers of people. His artistic agenda envisaged an integration of art in everyday life, making it accessible to all. He was convinced that people could be brought into a “unison of art and the world”, by a direct appeal to visual perception. As a result, he concentrated on optical effects. The art of spontaneous experience.

I now seem to be having more luck with the knobs and contour lines of the puzzle pieces. This is probably because I’ve decided to interlock the edge pieces first. With this, I am coming to realise that Vasarely’s art not only challenges our perceptions, it has the potential to alert us to the complexity of what we are already experiencing in the world around us. His work is characterised by a conflict, resulting from the eyes’ continual but vain attempt to make clear distinctions between two contradictory states of perception. Speaking in terms of perceptual psychology (Gestalt Theory), our brains can discover alternate spatial solutions for the same stimulus. Our experience of seeing the world in three dimensions forces us to decide on one spatial solution or another, without ever really coming to fix on one. To test this, I put the jigsaw aside for a moment and take out my notebook, and using a pencil, I draw out two identical interlocking squares joined by four parallel lines (see fig. II). It is the famous Necker Cube (discovered in 1832 by the Swiss crystallographer L. A. Necker). As I stare at the drawing, one square appears at first to recede away from me into the picture and the next to project itself out of it. It is tiring to look at this image for any length of time, because our brains are not capable of recognising two contradictory structures - of seeing the image as actually flat on the page.

Vasarely refers to this effect as ‘Trompe-I’Ceil’ (perpetual motion) or the “emotional shocks” that follow “one another without intermission”. His paintings use a similar device, which places such demands upon our vision, that our eyes, as it were, become aware of their own workings, with our vision becoming the true subject of the picture.

Lying before me now is an almost complete framework of the jigsaw puzzle. Resting in my hand is the last corner piece. It is my favourite piece, for with its laying will be created the cyclic interlocking of pieces with no beginning and no end. I see now, glimpses of the brilliance of its structure. What fills the inside of the puzzle that is ‘Majus MC’, I am still a little unsure, but I do know that it is diverse and complicated. I have to admit that I am really beginning to enjoy this puzzle, and at this moment, I feel closer now than ever before to understanding the fundamental genius of Vasarely – the master jigsaw maker. And it is beautiful !

John M. Cunningham
Regional Cultural Centre

Adrian Kelly
The Glebe House & Gallery