A writer for Time magazine coined the term "Op Art" in a 1964 article anticipating an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The popular show, entitled "The Responsive Eye," prominently featured works by Optical artists who, beginning in the late 1950s and 1960s, created paintings and graphic designs that effectively played with the way human beings see. With machine-like precision, Op artists painted swirling lines and checkered grids that seemed to flicker and vibrate, heave and billow, and change color. Op works were extolled in the popular press as refreshingly neat and mechanical; they appeared scientific and enjoyed popularity with a post-World War II American public consumed with lust for gadgetry, modern appliances, and atomic power.

Op Art started mainly as a reaction to the high spiritualism of prevalent post-war movements like Abstract Expressionism and Action Painting. While abstractionists and action painters attempted...