Programmations

The “Programmations”

Vasarely never made a secret of the way he produced his works, involving a rigorous application of the particular assigned programmation. 

It was this programmed, codified art that led the press to declare at the artist’s death that : ″the father of computer science has left us″.

How many times have I not observed him alone, locked in his personal workshop, in front of his sheet of Canson paper and his box of Caran d’Ache coloured pencils, in a penetrating silence, tracing the shapes of the work to be, and then as if by magic, in a burst, covering it with numbers accompanied by the letter indicating the colour.

It was with this rapid, precise gesture, applying colour scales meticulously defined by himself, that he expressed his creative impulse.  

The coding completed, his face lit up.  For him, the work was finished. 

Early in his career, before developing his Programmations technique, Vasarely employed a different method known as the prototype-départ (starting-point prototype): a small gouache sketch executed quickly to capture an idea or visual observation. If the result was considered successful, the theme was then produced on a larger scale.

The execution itself involved no creative effort, only the application of his visionary concepts, an expression, he often said, of the infinitely small to the infinitely large, of the atom to the cosmos. 

These programmations are the constituent matter of his work, his way of perceiving this eternal life, the infinite nature of which became in him an obsession. He summarized this unknown formula, a component of the universe, by means of a mathematical certainty. A certainty that he sought, via his works, to render permeable to the human brain, a recognizable, accessible aesthetic melody, presenting to us an abstract, codified infinity. 

At a time when technology had not yet entered full force into our daily lives, his programmations were affinitive to those of artificial intelligence, but it was this innovative, forerunner spirit that pioneered them.  

Michèle Vasarely