Art: Escaping The Provincial Trap

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Most Op Art, as it was christened in the '60s, has sunk into kitsch--think of Victor Vasarely!--but there are a few artists whose work has not collapsed in this way, chiefly Bridget Riley and Soto. With Soto, the effects are very direct but used, at best, with extreme subtlety. A black wire traces a line against some other lines behind it and at an angle to it, and the crossings move and optically blur in a fascinating way that makes use of small, slow changes, tiny inflections. It's a kind of kinetic art, though one in which the viewer moves but the object (unlike, say, the vanes and wires of a Calder) does not.

So Sotos do not reproduce; on the page, they look (and are) rather inert. A work like Green, Red, Blue Writing, 1978, becomes flat in reproduction. On the wall it's a different matter: the painted surface and the wires in front of it vibrate in the most delicate and unpredictable way; their movement is at one with their color; and the result is a real pictorial richness beyond any of the gimmickry that Op Art, Kinetic Art and their hybrids were accused of back in the '70s.