Victor VasarelyKantara II, 1956–59
Gift from Konrad Gromholt in 1967. Op art is the one modern genre whose effect is physiological and undeniable. Stand still for two minutes in front of the picture and report what moves.
This is the room for the feeling you have put into words: neat geometric patterns, and the thought "I could have painted that". The room exists to test the thought, so test it properly. One picture at a time.
The pair
Schoonhoven's white relief against Hammershøi's grey interior (room 058, The circle). Both are about almost nothing, and both are about light on a surface. One keeps a woman in the room. Does she matter?
The pictures
Carlos Cruz-DiezPhysichromie no. 673, 1973
Gift from the Friends of the National Gallery in 1973. Hundreds of coloured strips at calculated angles, so that the colour changes as you walk past. Try walking.
Jan SchoonhovenR 73-26, 1973
A white relief, bought in 2001, and one half of the pair below. In the same room hang Gunnar S. Gundersen's Grey Room (1966) and Mouche Thomsen's Black Rectangle in Pink and Blue (1972).
Loló SoldevillaForms in Space, 1956
One of Soldevilla's two reliefs from 1956 in room 078, bought in 2020.
Jørgen DoblougModel for "T 12-2" (Modell til «T 12-2»), 1970
One of Dobloug's small models from 1969–71, bought by the museum in 2024.
Around the pictures
The test, in order. 1. Could you? Pick the picture that most provokes the thought. Describe step by step how you would make it: materials, measurements, how long, what decisions. Be concrete.
2. Did anyone do it before 1950? The thought "I could have painted that" quietly assumes that anyone could have done it at any time. Ask why no one did, and what had to exist first: colour theory, industrial paint, a public that had seen Mondrian, the rejection of the hand after two wars.
3. What is the picture doing to your eye? Stand still for two minutes in front of the Vasarely and report what moves.
4. Then the honest conclusion. Having done 1–3, you may still write "a pattern, nothing more". But now it is a conclusion, not a glance.
The period eye: Konrad Gromholt gave the Vasarely in 1967, and the Friends of the National Gallery gave the Cruz-Diez in 1973. Who were these people, and what did owning op art mean in Oslo in the years around the 1972 referendum on joining the European Community? The Dobloug models were bought in 2024, so the museum is still making up its mind about this room.
Before you go
- The Art Assignment (PBS), "The Case for Rothko" and "The Case for Pollock" Ten minutes each. Arguments built for exactly your position.
- Ossian Ward, Ways of Looking (2014): the TABULA procedure Time, Association, Background, Understand, Look again, Assessment. Use it on the Vasarely.
- Kirk Varnedoe, Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art since Pollock (2006), the first lecture Varnedoe was a historian who had to defend abstraction to sceptics in a public hall. He is very good on the objection "anyone could have": he agrees that the making is often simple, and explains why the deciding was not.
Afterwards
Describe the pictures from memory, without looking at them, and record a voice note.
- No follow-up required. If nothing happened, write that with a date and come back in the last month of the year.