9009558 01-Victor-Vasarely-Lecture.Mp3

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection Victor Vasarely, introduced by Herbert Rickman and Diane Waldman, 1984

HERBERT RICKMAN Can you hear me? You cannot hear me. Now you can hear me. Okay, I feel like this is the Academy Awards Ceremony, but I assure you I am not Johnny Carson. Now we are here to listen to Victor Vasarely in what will undoubtedly be a rather sterling speech. There are however (break in audio)

HERBERT RICKMAN — urban architecture. Many of the cities of Europe today are reflective, in the best sense, of his influence, so, I am proud to read this message from the mayor and then, I want to make a presentation to Victor Vasarely. It reads, “To all in attendance, Guggenheim Museum, greetings. On behalf of the City of New York, I salute our distinguished visitor from France, the world- renowned artist, Victor Vasarely. The enduring impact of Vasarely, the father of optical art, lives in the beauty [00:01:00] and power of shape, light, color, and movement, the stuff of which light itself is made. How fortunate we New Yorkers are that Victor Vasarely is sharing his vision and genius with us once more. While I cannot join you this evening, I am very much with you in the vibrant spirit of this occasion. Accordingly, I have asked my special assistant, Herb Rickman, to relay my best wishes to one and all with a special 76th birthday congratulations to our welcome guest and superb artist, and now, honorary New Yorker, Victor Vasarely.” (applause) I’m going to pin Mister Vasarely with the — this is New York’s most significant gift, sir, and I will explain it to you later in French. It’s the apple. For us, it’s the Légion d'honneur, and it represents the highest award of the City of New York. There’s also a personal gift from the mayor. [00:02:00] (applause) May I also take this opportunity to introduce the deputy director of the Guggenheim Museum, Diane Waldman. (applause)

DIANE WALDMAN Thank you very much. It is a pleasure for me to welcome you to the Guggenheim Museum, and I send greetings to all of you from Peter Lawson-Johnston, the president of the museum, and Thomas Messer, director of the Guggenheim Foundation. Both of them, unfortunately, could not be here tonight because they are in Venice, prior to the opening of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection this Saturday, but they have asked me to welcome you here and to thank you all for coming. I would also like to thank Victor Vasarely, whose art is not only represented [00:03:00] in this museum, but is renowned throughout the world, and is represented in most, if not all, of the major museums in the world. Finally, and briefly, I would like to thank Dean London, and NYU, for our collaboration, which has turned out to be very happy indeed. I welcome you once again, and know that we will all look forward to hearing Victor Vasarely’s lecture this evening. Thank you. (applause)

HERBERT RICKMAN We also have an award for Mister Vasarely. It is the highest award given in the Gallatin division. This award is given each year to a prominent person who has contributed a good deal, to the life of the city, the life of the university, and the life of the arts. It is called the Certificate of Distinction, and it is awarded this year to Victor Vasarely, [00:04:00] for his artistic contributions to the aesthetic quality of this world. I’d like to present this award to Mister Vasarely now. (applause) I also have the great honor this evening to introduce Mister Vasarely, by making a couple of comments about his art. I am not an art historian, but I’ve come to appreciate, and see, and admire, Mister Vasarely’s work. For some, Victor Vasarely is an

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection Victor Vasarely, introduced by Herbert Rickman and Diane Waldman, 1984 interesting artist whose experiments in form and color have broken new artistic ground. For others, he is the father of op art, an illusionist, who dissects, and re-dissects, visual perspective. For me, Victor Vasarely possesses these characteristics in one other human dimension that sets him apart [00:05:00] from other contemporary artists. He is a visionary. Vasarely has seen the future. He is one of those artists imbued with an anticipation of what will be. If Cézanne was the artistic bridge between the nineteenth and the twentieth century, Vasarely is the bridge between the twentieth and the twenty-first century. His work transcends time. His vision is at once, telescopic and kaleidoscopic. He hones in on a subject with extraordinary specificity, and then uses color and light to create movement and change. At first, Vasarely was a commercial artist using his wit and drafting skills to describe health problems. He drew a cane with a sad face to describe rheumatism, and a handkerchief blowing in the wind to convey cold symptoms. But like all great artists, his work went through a metamorphosis, albeit his interest in shapes and perspective was to characterize all of his later painting. Monsieur Vasarely was intent on changing the environment, as were many [00:06:00] members of the Bauhaus school. But for him, shapes assumed aesthetic dimensions: gates appear to open, spheres appear to converge. His artistic world is a play. His representations are engaged in a game of hide and seek, transmogrified into an existential concern for who is hiding, and who does the seeking. Vasarely’s world of shapes is at first blush a child’s world, where images reign. But on reflection, this is an art of very rare sophistication, as if force fields, computer scales, differential equations and quasars will give in visual representation. His art converts the ineffable characteristics of science into a sensuous experience. I was amused by people I observed at the Vasarely Foundation in Aix-en-Provence who said, “I don’t appreciate this abstract art,” and then sat for half an hour staring hypnotically at one Vasarely painting. Of course, that is really easily explained. Vasarely, in [00:07:00] the Vasarely world, the spiral goes on to infinity. Its depth is explored at risk of being enveloped into a visual whirlpool. The Vasarely planets create a force field, an undefined valley that playfully engages our sense of perspective. Does the field come forward, or does it retreat into the distance? It is difficult, on the basis of a printer or serigraph, to appreciate the majesty of Vasarely’s work. His most impressive paintings are in Aix and at his museum in Gordes, the large Vasarely paintings and tapestries that create a wonderland of walls in the foundation are the entrance gates to a land of visual intrigue and curiosity. Once one has settled on a bench observing the movement of shape and color, time stops. The viewer is transported to any place where the horizon opens to an adventure of color. A Vasarely painting is like a building once described by [Heidegger?]: “You can with extraordinary exactitude, note its dimensions, its color, its design, and still not provide a vivid description of the building. [00:08:00] That can only be conveyed if you’ve had the experience of being in it.” This is equally true of the Vasarely design. Its colors, its shapes, its lighting don’t begin to approach the feelings engendered in observing the painting firsthand — the moment when the personal and the artistic sensibility are united. If the contemporary artist sees the world as morose, and many do, Vasarely is joyful. If the artist is melancholy, Vasarely is exuberant. His artistic exploration not only provides the viewer with fascination, the work itself is forever fascinating. His work is intrinsically the human imagination made pictorial. For scientists looking for answers to our teleology, there is always enigmas. For the psychologists looking for the deepest emotion, there is only superficial explanations. For the artist searching for the foundations of his work, a way to explain his role in this century, there is Vasarely. Thank you. [00:09:00] (applause) (side conversation in French; inaudible)

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection Victor Vasarely, introduced by Herbert Rickman and Diane Waldman, 1984

VICTOR VASARELY Hello. (applause) I am very happy to be here in New York. (applause) [00:10:00] And not France. (laughter) [00:10:06] [French] [00:11:07]

TRANSLATOR Okay, I’m going to read you the English. “In 1955, I identified two notions, until then separate: form and color. From now on, form-color — one equals two, two equals one — constitutes the plastic unit. The unit consists of two constants: the form, nucleus, and its surrounding complement, the substance, square. Besides its two-form aspect, the unit necessarily features a two-color aspect, which is blended or contrasted at the same time as positive and negative. Thus, the resolved unit is contradictory, and is a synthesis of pure dialectics.”

VICTOR VASARELY [00:11:56] [French] [00:13:34]

TRANSLATOR “Each unit is reducible and extensible in proportions, giving us a full range of quantities, or the composed mobile scale. The squareness of these quantities provides maximum rational flexibility, as well as an underlying arithmetic reference. With an alphabet of 30 forms-colors, within the unit alone, we possess several thousand virtualities, by simple permutation of the pairs. According to the number of units in the group — for example, 4, 9, 36, 400 and above — subsequent to more complex permutations — black-white, black colors, white colors, colors contrasting, or blending colors — owing to the use of progressive quantities, mixing in the same group of units of 2, 4, 8, or 16 times greater, and finally, through image mirrors, multiple meanings, mono- and multi-colorings, [00:14:34] and the alternation of vibrating and silent ranges, we are able to obtain an almost infinite number of possibilities.”

VICTOR VASARELY [00:14:45] [French] [00:15:29]

TRANSLATOR “The introduction in the plastic arts of the combination on this scale, provides a universal tool, while permitting the manifestation of personality, and not as specific ethnic characteristics. We can already notice the contours of a real global folklore, which is modern in its concept and in its technique, and which is unified at its base, and highly complex at its top — in other words, a victory of the objective in the plane of the subjective.”

VICTOR VASARELY [00:16:04] [French] [00:17:24]

TRANSLATOR “The form-color unit underlies a new plastic language, which is also new in its ability to be translated into industrial techniques. Here, the form-color unit moves in building material by the early impression gained of the plastic quality in the prefabricated elements. Such multicolor and multi-material squares may be clearly integrated into conventional architecture. The huge housing networks necessary will at last emerge from the bleak landscape, in the style particular to our age. A technique of embellishment intrinsic to functional design is held in the era of the

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection Victor Vasarely, introduced by Herbert Rickman and Diane Waldman, 1984 continual new, the requirement of a social economy founded on productivity and consumption. The eternal city, with its leper, its ruins, and its fakes, will be replaced by the eternally [00:18:24] young city.”

VICTOR VASARELY [00:18:25] [French] [00:19:32]

TRANSLATOR “The form-color unit, by virtue of its constants, will enter the realm of the sciences. Identified by genetics, statistics, and experimental psychology, it will become the instrument with which to give young people early education and aesthetic conditioning. In the past, the purpose of art was to feel and to create. Today, it must be to conceive and to instruct to create. While the perpetuity of the creative work lay in its jealously guarded conservation, today it is ensured by the re-creation, multiplication, and diffusion of prototypes, which merit this function. Thus, the myth of the masterpiece will slowly disappear, and the only present creative work, produced as a result of, and by technical know-how, will triumph.”

VICTOR VASARELY [00:20:28] [French] [00:21:28]

TRANSLATOR “Providing an answer to the binary question, the form-color unit is the stuff [paryxinos?] of electronic memories. The form-color unit is a rich source of blending or elevating stimuli, and anticipates health and joy, on which the balance of our great human conglomerations depends. My goal: to give to look plastic beauty to the entire humanity. To do so, it was necessary for me to judiciously divide my sensibility, my rigor, my ideology, my technique, my romanticism, and my modernity. There are as many individual characteristics as there are people, so it was necessary that everyone should find, in my works, whatever it is that suits him or her.”

VICTOR VASARELY [00:22:21] [French]

TRANSLATOR [00:22:28] [French]

VICTOR VASARELY [00:22:31] [French] [00:22:32]

TRANSLATOR You’re going to show the slides now? [00:22:41] [French]

VICTOR VASARELY [00:22:46] [French]

TRANSLATOR [00:22:49] [French] [00:22:50] They can’t (inaudible). Without the light, you can’t make the comments on the slides, so...

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection Victor Vasarely, introduced by Herbert Rickman and Diane Waldman, 1984

VICTOR VASARELY [00:23:04] [French] [00:23:10]

TRANSLATOR Okay. He’ll read about the slide (inaudible). I don’t even know how you want to do this.

VICTOR VASARELY [00:23:15] [French] [00:23:37]

TRANSLATOR “My structural studies were strongly based on Einstein’s universal relativity, as well as on [Broglie’s?] theory, universal matter, splits into waves and corpuscles, and this is Einstein.” (pauses)

VICTOR VASARELY Oui. [00:24:06] [French] [00:24:28]

TRANSLATOR “This is called Harlequin Two, work from 1935. Already at that time, I had created the [Korpeschooler?] structure, and made it more eloquent by the inflation, which became later the Vega period.” (pauses)

VICTOR VASARELY Oui. [00:24:56] [French] [00:25:09]

TRANSLATOR “[E lava?], it belongs to the Cristal period, with a microscopic structure, where the substance- form theory, the plastic unit, is already present.”

VICTOR VASARELY [00:25:34] [French] [00:25:49]

TRANSLATOR “[Filet?], I — (inaudible) because of the blended colors, the axonometric compositions with drawings become a tri-dimensional reality.”

VICTOR VASARELY [00:26:08] [French]

TRANSLATOR [00:26:20] [French]

VICTOR VASARELY [00:26:24] [French]

TRANSLATOR [00:26:26] [French]

VICTOR VASARELY

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection Victor Vasarely, introduced by Herbert Rickman and Diane Waldman, 1984

Oui.

TRANSLATOR [00:26:27] [French]

VICTOR VASARELY [00:26:29] [French] [00:26:39]

TRANSLATOR “Okay, this is Kaldor, which has the same fundamental as in the Einstein painting, but created in perspective squares.” (pauses) [00:27:08] [French]

VICTOR VASARELY [00:27:09] [French] [00:27:11]

TRANSLATOR “There’s no explanation here.” (laughter) [00:27:20] [French]

VICTOR VASARELY [00:27:30] [French] [00:27:32]

TRANSLATOR Okay.

VICTOR VASARELY [00:27:38] [French] [00:27:50]

TRANSLATOR “The painting [Dig?], four inflations of the Vega type which, with interchanging coloring, give a beautiful quality painting.” [00:28:13] [French]

VICTOR VASARELY [00:28:14] [French]

TRANSLATOR [00:28:15] [French] [00:28:16] (laughs) Finished. (applause) [00:28:26] [French] [00:28:29]

HERBERT RICKMAN I don’t know if this will work anymore. Mister Vasarely is going to entertain your questions, (translator translates into French in background) so please, I urge you to ask a question. Is there anyone here who has a question? No bright soul who wants to ask his question? Yes, [Anna?].

ANNA Mister Vasarely has spoken very eloquently about technique. What about (translator translates into French in background) passion?

TRANSLATOR [00:28:58] [French] [00:29:06]

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection Victor Vasarely, introduced by Herbert Rickman and Diane Waldman, 1984

VICTOR VASARELY [00:29:10] [French] [00:29:16]

TRANSLATOR “Technique is necessary because” —

MALE 1 (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) please.

TRANSLATOR Oh.

HERBERT RICKMAN The question was, “Monsieur Vasarely spoke about technique, but what about passion?”

TRANSLATOR He said that “tech” —

HERBERT RICKMAN I hope I said that passionately. (laughter)

TRANSLATOR “The reason one speaks of technique is that you simply need technique to make the painting.”

VICTOR VASARELY [00:29:38] [French] [00:29:51]

TRANSLATOR “But what’s in the painting, it all depends on the specific character, characteristics, of the painter who created it.”

VICTOR VASARELY [00:30:01] [French] [00:30:08]

TRANSLATOR “Man is always split between objectivity and subjectivity.”

VICTOR VASARELY [00:30:13] [French] [00:30:37]

TRANSLATOR “A painting that there’s no scientific elements, only is like a draft, and appeals only to certain people who find fun in it.”

VICTOR VASARELY [00:30:54] [French] [00:31:16]

TRANSLATOR

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection Victor Vasarely, introduced by Herbert Rickman and Diane Waldman, 1984

“Objectivity and subjectivity have to be very well defined when you’re making a painting, so that, for some people, it can work on them, and for others, against it.” That’s it.

MALE 1: Are there other questions?

HERBERT RICKMAN Other questions? Yes sir, [Lorne?].

LORNE: What is your theory (inaudible) that relates the aesthetic embedded in these individual works to a larger urban and social environment?

TRANSLATOR [00:31:48] [French] [00:31:49]

HERBERT RICKMAN I hope you all heard that, because I’m not sure I could repeat it.

TRANSLATOR [00:31:51] [French]

VICTOR VASARELY [00:32:02] [French]

TRANSLATOR [00:32:04] [French]

VICTOR VASARELY [00:32:08] [French] [00:32:13]

TRANSLATOR “The few paintings you saw tonight —

VICTOR VASARELY [00:32:16] [French] [00:32:19]

TRANSLATOR — are prototypes —

VICTOR VASARELY [00:32:20] [French] [00:32:21]

TRANSLATOR — prototypes for the start.”

VICTOR VASARELY [00:32:24] [French] [00:32:28]

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection Victor Vasarely, introduced by Herbert Rickman and Diane Waldman, 1984

TRANSLATOR “They contain all the elements —

VICTOR VASARELY [00:32:30] [French] [00:32:39]

TRANSLATOR — that are necessary so that the plastic visual arts can have many functions.”

VICTOR VASARELY [00:32:45] [French] [00:32:55]

TRANSLATOR “I find it very poor that just the painting would be framed and hung in someone’s living room.”

VICTOR VASARELY [00:33:04] [French] [00:33:13]

TRANSLATOR “It is much more important that these paintings be reproduced in serigraphs —

VICTOR VASARELY [00:33:20] [French] [00:33:21]

TRANSLATOR — or lithographs —

VICTOR VASARELY [00:33:23] [French] [00:33:30]

TRANSLATOR — or that they be represented in the architecture —

VICTOR VASARELY [00:33:32] [French] [00:33:58]

TRANSLATOR — and that they be represented in the introduction” — [00:34:02] [French]

VICTOR VASARELY [00:34:05] [French] [00:34:09]

TRANSLATOR An intervention?

VICTOR VASARELY [00:34:09] [French] [00:34:14]

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection Victor Vasarely, introduced by Herbert Rickman and Diane Waldman, 1984

TRANSLATOR Ah, “integration into the existing forms that exist outside in the landscape.”

MALE 1 We have one more question? Yes sir.

MALE 2 (inaudible) Vasarely, what is his conception of the arts now in Soviet Union, so-called (inaudible)?

TRANSLATOR [00:34:41] [French] [00:34:43]

MALE 1 (inaudible)

TRANSLATOR [00:34:47] [French] [00:34:49]

MALE 1 Question.

TRANSLATOR [00:34:51] [French] —

HERBERT RICKMAN Question, [Dale?], with the (translator translates into French in background) art of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc and whether that is social realism.

VICTOR VASARELY [00:35:08] [French] [00:35:21]

TRANSLATOR “The social art of Russia —

VICTOR VASARELY [00:35:23] [French] [00:35:24]

TRANSLATOR — is a title.”

VICTOR VASARELY [00:35:26] [French] [00:35:46]

TRANSLATOR “Because —

VICTOR VASARELY [00:35:47] [French] [00:35:47]

Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection Victor Vasarely, introduced by Herbert Rickman and Diane Waldman, 1984

TRANSLATOR — it’s just a title because before, there were also paintings of people and instead of being the workers, it was the [grasenyer?] in their castles.”

HERBERT RICKMAN If there are no additional questions, let me make a comment. Monsieur Vasarely is in the United States for the first time in seven years. Unbeknownst to most of you, it also happens to be (translator translates into French in background) Monsieur Vasarely’s birthday. I’m not going to ask you to sing happy birthday. However, we’d like to express the gratitude of New York University, of the Vasarely Center, of the Guggenheim Museum, for his presence in this country. It’s really an honor to have him here, and of course, a great pleasure to have you here as well. Thank you very much. (applause)

TRANSLATOR You want to undo his — I got — you’re welcome.

HERBERT RICKMAN We have the Vasarely paintings upstairs for those of you who would like to join us in a reception. Someone suggested that we sing “Happy Birthday” to Monsieur Vasarely. Those of you who feel like doing that, please feel free to do so. (background chatter; inaudible)

AUDIENCE (sings) Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear (inaudible), happy birthday to you. (applause)

END OF AUDIO FILE 9009558_01-Victor-Vasarely-Lecture.mp3

Victor Vasarely Lecture, introduction by Herbert Rickman / Victor Vasarely. 1984/4/11. Reel-to-Reel collection. A0004. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Archives, New York