Optical art; A trick, an illusion, or a different art form altogether?
What do exhibition visitors make of a canvas that appears to contain multidirectional black-and-white stripes – or are they gray? Maybe there is a pinkish tinge? Some visitors can see red, green lines on the far right of the canvas. Someone else can see a very particular yellow shade, not quite cerulean or forget-me-not blue.
In the background, Youri smiles. Their comments will all feed into the joint ‘brain project’ he is running in conjunction with the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig and Vilnius University: ‘Op art meets the neurosciences’.
Op Art (unlike pop art) stages optical illusions. It’s mathematical in nature; everything is designed, down to hundredths of a millimeter, to mislead the viewer’s eyes into making their brain detect something that doesn’t exist. The image takes on different hues depending on the viewer’s position, the way they perceive it and the impact it has on one or other part of the brain. Accomplished works of Op Art require an astonishing mastery of freehand working. Only around twenty artists worldwide have made such works over multiple decades, and Youri is a master of the art. He’s the only one in Switzerland. Who is he?
Who is Youri, a ‘modern-day El Greco’?
At 16, Youri set his sights on Paris, the capital of arts and bohemian living. He studied by day studied Fine art at the National School of Fine Arts (student of Robert Cami) and worked at Les Hallesmarket by night. This suited him because, at the time, the famous fresh food ‘halls’ were still in the city center. Youri spent four years in Paris.
He then returned to Lausanne where he attended the École des Beaux-Arts. But Youri was born restless, and this Swiss Canton capital soon seemed too small for him. He was awarded a first prize for his woodcuts and won a scholarship and went to study at Geneva’s contemporary engraving center, le Centre de la Gravure Contemporaine. But why stay on the shores of Lake Geneva when there was a whole world out there waiting for him? Youri headed to Zurich and found work as an assistant to the fantastical surrealist Friedrich Kuhn. He also regularly visited the famously inventive father of ‘Alien’, HR Giger, to whom a museum is now dedicated in Gruyères.
From there, Youri went abroad. With another scholarship awarded in 1967, he pursued his artistic research at The University of Gothenburg. It was here that he discovered Op Art, which he had not even heard of. The pioneering Op Artists had all gathered in Sweden for an exhibition at Gothenburg Museum of Art. Youri met Jesús-Rafael Soto and Carlos Cruz-Diez, asking them to teach him the foundations of this fascinating art form. In a little over a week, these artists would make a deep impression on his entire artistic career. At the exhibition Youri also encountered Julio Le Parc, whose Op Art pieces use light to magical effect.
Our artist’s next stop was Latin America: he met big-name architects including Oscar Niemeyer in Rio de Janeiro, Clorindo Testa in Buenos Aires and Ruy Ohtake in São Paolo, plus the great landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx on his estate at Barra de Guaratiba. This provided an opportunity to share ideas and connections between Op Art and contemporary architecture. Then Youri went around the world, to Amsterdam, Hamburg, Bern, Chicago, Tokyo, and finally ended up back in Lausanne in 1981! It was here that his imagination was kept in check: his idea of coloring Lake Geneva fluorescent pink using natural pigments was firmly rejected. Environmentalists (active even then) and the Mayor of Lausanne Paul-René Martin joined forces to prevent the project. There was nothing he could do. Youri was now at home nowhere in the world, but could be happy anywhere – so he set off again on his travels. In New York he got to know the contemporary art and Pop art scene, and – long before Serge Diakonoff’s resounding success with body painting – Youri decorated stunning models and students who frequented Manhattan’s nightclubs.
A polyglot
Languages are no barrier for Youri: they aren’t even an obstacle. He learns them and he gets by. This attitude saw him spending time with very many different nationalities over the 12 years he spent in Berne. One day the Argentinian ambassador invited Youri to the country, ruled at the time by the military dictator Juan Carlos Ongania. Youri visited straight away, and through various gatherings organized by the Buenos Aires intelligentsia encountered a young underground scene – one important way for these young people to survive under the dictatorship. Youri felt at ease in these illegal spaces, and like a global citizen in his home country. He spent several months there before setting off across South America by bus. For the following two years, he was on the road and marveled at what he saw. Youri’s next stop was Venezuela. Fate handed him the keys to the Ateneo de Caracas theater, whose director at the time was Carlos Gimenez. Youri had a ball! He was able to stage his own productions and produce performances involving the well-known dancers ‘La Otra Tropa’, who improvised in a dialogue with Debussy and Chopin in ‘La Torta que camina’. He created multiple works for this Venezuelan theater, and then other theaters and foundations. Critics saw his works as part of a new vision for contemporary theater. Youri always garnered attention, a traveler with an improbable, psychedelic-colored look. This, and his many other abilities, guided him as he sailed into the unknown.
Op Art
We have seen how original Youri is, but he is also a great illusionist and has huge reserves of talent. This is amply illustrated by viewing one of his works of art intently, whether sitting or standing in front of it. Then the world turns upside down, sometimes very swiftly! Some viewers are simply impressed by the patience the artist must have exercised to invent these infinitely repeating shapes which, once assembled, add an extra dimension to the work. Other observers find themselves attracted to, sucked in by these optical warping effects created using light and shade, arranged so they adopt forms that only exist for the viewer themselves. And some people feel uneasy. They need to look away to avoid nausea as their brain rolls and pitches through the canvas. This is a feature of kinetic art or highly skilled Op Art. The vibrations that produce these physical sensations arise from an optical illusion created by colors, brush strokes, circles and a sophisticated arrangement of lines varying in thickness. Youri pushes the limits of the human retina and the healthy mind. He explains: “I calculate each line so that the distances between them, or their thicknesses, create an illusion. The human eye cannot simultaneously take in two surfaces with violently contrasting colors. Similarly, superimposing different interlocking frameworks, first in black and white and then in color, creates the illusion of movement when you adjust your gaze, when in fact everything is static.”
All media are suitable for use here, from canvases to plexiglass, sculptures, steel, silk screens, tapestries, bodies and even stamps – three were commissioned by Swiss Post. Since Youri began investigating the aesthetics of movement, there’s no stopping him.
He’s won a variety of prizes and is featured on the walls of museums at home in Switzerland such as Popa in Porrentruy, Kunsthaus Zürich, Cabinet des estampes in Geneva – and museums abroad such as Sakima Art Museum in Okinawa Prefecture and Ino-cho Paper Museum in Kochi-Ken, Japan, plus Angel Orensanz Foundation and Center for the Arts in New York, etc.
Neuroscience
Art in motion is something that has intrigued researchers for years who have been looking in depth at the mysteries of the human brain. As we mentioned earlier, kinetic art can cause nausea and serious discomfort in highly sensitive people. Equally, it can calm down a brain in overdrive. For the past five years, Youri has been conducting a scientific study at the CHUV run by Professor Bogdan Draganski and the Neuroimaging Research Laboratory (LREN): the Brain Project. The study’s main objective is to gain a better understanding of how Op Art affects the brain, and how this type of art can benefit neuroscience. The Brain Project 2 phase is now underway, during which an Op Art IT platform will be built so that a person suffering from depression, stress or with psychological problems will feel more serene and at ease within themselves when presented with a work of Op Art that has been transformed specifically to suit them. The original team will be working on this new phase, alongside newcomer Flavien Volken. He is an IT specialist who will work with LREN to determine the effects of Op Art on a subject’sneuronal processes as they seek to regain balance and wellbeing.
The book
In 2022, Éditions Favre published a book about the interface between Op Art and neuroscience, ‘L’Op Art rencontre les neurosciences’; it describes this research, with supporting accounts from experts. The success of this bestselling art book seems to prove that the perception of illusions is a subject of interest to both scientists and artists. Soon this subject may also interest people in love, since the aim for the near future is to deepen this art’s effect on those areas of the brain that control our emotions. Yet since everyone has at least 700 zones and images in their brain, it may take some time.
Brain Project 2 aims to resolve every individual’s wellbeing, with a new dedicated platform expected in a few years’ time, after it has been assessed during clinical tests.
December 2022
Nina Brissot
INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL WORLD CIRCUS 