MASS MoCA

A Synthetic Optical Allusion

by Tatianna Suriel

     

    The unrivaled black and white symmetrical painting was yet an optical allusion. The oxymoronic painting was the opposite of a typical disheveled painting, having uniform 8-inch white and black stripes that were adjacent to each other. All of Sol Lewitt’s wall drawings in the Mass MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) are called Wall Drawing, and then the number; this particular painting is split into two numbers called Wall Drawing 630 and Wall Drawing 631.

            In these alternating black and white paintings, they are each divided differently. On wall Drawing 631 the wall is divided into two equal parts by a line drawn from corner to corner, so they each have their longest stripes, and smallest stripes, but on Wall Drawing 630 the wall is divided horizontally into two equal parts so the width again are equal, just they are different in the sense vertically and horizontally, where the amount of stripes or lengths may change.

The perception of the painting is interesting because they are the exact same width stripes, just rearranged in four different ways with different lengths and numbers of stripes. The arrangement of the stripes and the two pieces beside each other makes it look like some sort of optical allusion or make it seem as if the stripes are of all different widths. Had one not looked at the explanation label, one would think the pieces were a single piece because they are incorporated with each other so nicely. Sol LeWitt’s wall painting designs are extraordinary, especially since they took so many different hands to create, and are much more vast paintings than what we are used to seeing.