Vasarely

Victor Vasarely
Nives II
1949-58
oil on canvas
Tate Modern, London

Victor Vasarely
Lacerta
1955
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Victor Vasarely
Iaca
1955-57
oil on canvas
Burton Gallery, University of Leeds, West Yorkshire

Victor Vasarely
Eridan III
1956
acrylic on panel
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Victor Vasarely
Hotomi II
1956
oil on panel
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Victor Vasarely
Vega III
1957-59
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Victor Vasarely
Taïmyr
1958
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Victor Vasarely
Supernovae
1959-61
oil on canvas
Tate Modern, London

Victor Vasarely
Geta
ca. 1960-63
oil on canvas
Ulster Museum, Belfast

Victor Vasarely-
Meride
1961-63
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Victor Vasarely
Köntösh
1964
oil on board
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Victor Vasarely
IX BF Positif
1968
screenprint
Dallas Museum of Art

Victor Vasarely
Taller
1968
screenprint
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Victor Vasarely
Tridim T
1968
tempera on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Victor Vasarely
Untitled
ca. 1968
screenprint
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane

Victor Vasarely
Untitled
ca. 1968
screenprint
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Victor Vasarely
Cheyt M
1970
tempera on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Pearl

        Well, I admit

A small boy's eyes grew rounder and lips moister

To find it invisibly chained, at home in the hollow

Of his mother's throat: the real, deepwater thing.

    Far from the mind at six to plumb

X-raywise those glimmering lamplit

Asymmetries to self-immolating mite

        Or angry grain of sand

Not yet proverbial. Yet his would be the hand

        Mottled with survival –

    She having slipped (how? when?) past reach –

    That one day grasped it. Sign of what

But wisdom's trophy. Time to meditate,

Skin upon skin, so cunningly they accrete,

    The input. For its early mote

                        Of grit

    Reborn as orient moon to gloat

In verdict over the shucked, outsmarted meat . . .

One layer, so to speak, of calcium carbonate

    That formed in me is the last shot

    – I took the seminar I teach

    In Loss to a revival –

Of Sacha Guitry's classic Perles de la Couronne.

        The hero has tracked down

His prize. He's holding forth, that summer night,
At the ship's rail, all suavity and wit,

    Gem swaying like a pendulum

From his fing – oops! To soft bubble-blurred harpstring

Arpeggios regaining depths (man the camera, follow)

Where an unconscious world, my yawning oyster,

                Shuts on it. 

– James Merrill (1995)