Tactile Painting
Yaacov Agam, 1963

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Yaacov Agam's Tactile Painting, seen above, is emblematic of his transformable works of the 1950s and 60s. Art historian, Frank Popper, considers these pieces to be among the first attempts toward creating an interactive art. Works like Tactile Painting encouraged the "spectator-participant" to rearrange the image without fear of negative consequence.
The transformable works lack the true two-way communication or "interplay" that Popper argues is essential to interactive art but, for the period, these represent bold conceptual gestures. A piece like Tactile Painting effectively blurs the notion of artistic authorship, certainly paving the way for 60s Happenings and other participational art forms.

I'm wholly intrigued by Agam's early work simply because of the impressive conceptual leap it entails. I'm curious to know what questions drove him to this particular revelation.

Submitted by
Brett Schultz

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