Yellow Star

This work was part of Looking 101, a 2024 exhibition that supported Northwestern University’s undergraduate curriculum with an emphasis on first-year students.The following text was made available in the exhibition via cell phone camera (QR code) and booklet

Paul Jablonka’s print is an example of Op Art—short for Optical Art—an international art movement that came to prominence in the 1960s and explored the ways pattern, color, and form stimulate the eye. Op Art works are often abstract, with stark contrasts between background and foreground. Resulting images create optical illusions and sensations, including swelling, warping, or flashing, sometimes causing physical responses in the viewer such as unsteadiness and afterimages. Jablonka’s juxtaposition of high contrast colors, such as the greenish mustard and orange in this work, create an illusion of vibrating movement. The central figure in the print consists of 32 quadrilateral shapes: eight squares, eight parallelograms, and 16 trapezoids. These shapes are arranged to create an illusion of three-dimensional space, suggesting cubes or empty boxes seen from a variety of perspectives. The outline of the central figure is symmetrical in a number of ways. If the shape were folded in half, the lines on each side would match. Also, if rotated on its own axis in quarter turns, it would look the same; in mathematics, this is called rotational or radial symmetry.