Julian Stanczak, Tense Cluster, 1966

Julian Stanczak, Obsession II, 1965, collection of
Neil Rector, Columbus, Ohio

Julian Stanczak, Elusive, 1995, collection of
Robert Mann

Eye to Eye

By Dan Tranberg

It’s been a while since art explicitly about visual perception has been at the forefront of the art world. Though an acclaimed retrospective of works by British Op artist Bridget Riley opened at New York’s Dia Center for the Arts earlier this year, the visually dazzling geometric patterns of Op art made only a brief splash in the mid-’60s, then were quickly disseminated as sources for fabric designs and psychedelic bric-a-brac.

A recent resurgence of optically oriented abstraction has stirred new interest in Op art. Lucky for us, its key pioneer, Julian Stanczak, lives right here in Cleveland. A major retrospective of Stanczak’s work, currently on view at the Cleveland Institute of Art’s Reinberger Gallery, traces the progression of Stanczak’s art from his early studies through works that typify Op. But what the show celebrates is not the "Cleveland connection" to a famous art movement; it is the remarkable life and work of an artist determined to find clarity in a world of chaos.

Julian Stanczak has been making art for nearly six decades. In less than half that time, he became a prominent American artist, represented in New York by the Martha Jackson Gallery and featured in the 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art. Remarkably, he accomplished all of this after losing the use of his right arm as a precocious (right-handed) teenager.

By the time Stanczak arrived in Cleveland at the age of 21, he had experienced far more horror than most witness in a lifetime. In 1940, when he was 11 years old, Stanczak and his family were forced from their home in Poland into a Siberian labor camp. They escaped in 1942, traveling on foot until they met up with the exiled Polish army. Out of desperation, Julian (at age 13) had to leave his family, lie about his age, and join the army "because they had food." But severe illness and the loss of the use of his right arm left him no choice but to desert.

He found his mother and sister in a refugee camp and retrieved his brother from an orphanage. Together, the family traveled to India, then finally to a community of Polish exiles in the jungles of British Uganda, where they were detained for the next seven years, living in straw huts. Because Stanczak’s father was serving in the Polish Army under British command, and Poland’s newly formed Communist government prevented the family from returning to their homeland after the war, the Stanczaks were eventually granted permanent residence in England. After two years, they emigrated to the U.S., first to New York, then to Cleveland, where jobs were available. Soon after arriving, Stanczak enrolled as a student at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

"I was born at age 21 in Cleveland, Ohio," he recently remarked while standing in front of one of his new paintings. But though Stanczak has every right and reason to feel that way, his life and his art stand as a testament to the triumph of his will. The Op art of the 1960s is only part of the picture. The most exciting part of the show, in fact, is Stanczak’s recent work, in which seemingly random elements are incorporated into linear systems, producing images of amazing visual subtlety and perceptual complexity.

Considering his tumultuous youth, it’s not difficult to surmise that Stanczak sought order and control in art. Tracing his early works, one can see a clear progression from an intuitive attraction to rhythmic patterns to an increasingly systematic analysis of form and color. Crucial to these early developments is Stanczak’s tutelage under the man he referred to as an "expert in the mystery of color," Josef Albers. Stanczak studied with Albers at Yale, where he received his MFA in 1954. Clearly, Albers helped Stanczak refine his understanding of the interaction of color. But it was Stanczak’s own ingenuity that lead him to develop images accentuating physical sensations associated with vision.

When Martha Jackson chose the title Optical Paintings for Stanczak’s first solo show at her gallery in 1964, and a Time magazine review contracted optical to "Op," the term "Op art" was born. But neither Stanczak nor Albers approved of it. Albers commented at the time that "perceptual art" would be a more appropriate term, undoubtedly because the word "optical" connotes only sight and not the more complex issues of perception, into which Stanczak was clearly tapping.

Regardless of art-world buzzwords, Julian Stanczak’s lifetime of work is an odyssey that will likely take years to fully appreciate. Perhaps the greatest benefit of seeing a half-century worth of his work is the inevitable realization that Stanczak’s art has very little to do with a passing trend. Rather, it’s about the basic human need to understand our connection to the physical world. Ultimately, his paintings are not lessons in vision; they’re lessons in life.

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This article appeared in The Free Times , September 12, 2001

© 2007 Dan Tranberg. All rights reserved.