The Maximal Sixties: Pop, Op, and Figuration | The Museum of Modern Art
This small and peculiar exhibition features a mix of works by great and lesser-known artists in three genres, aimed at representing the scenario of adversarial art philosophies in the 1960’s. It functions as a barometer of taste for that era, ranging from the Pop and Op movements to Figuration—all of which, as the show’s curator states, constitute “the flip side of Minimalism’s reductive abstraction and visual austerity.” The first room contains Op Art, which is represented by Bridget Riley, Joseph Albers, Lee Bontecou, and Takis. These works possess a strong sense of mediated effect laboriously absent in the other genres. I was drawn to a sculpture by Takis, which functions as a sort of physically realized drawing. Of all the Op artists’ work, Riley’s fades most consistently into a miasma of whiter space, somewhere between the image, our eye, and our mind. The second room is devoted to Pop Art, and includes minor works by a number of big name personaliti