Planetary Folklore Participants No.1

Victor Vasarely used magnetism to offer an interactive composition. Each of the circles and squares in his Planetary Folklore Participants No.1 could be interchanged to give different colour and form variations across the relief. Not only can the internal shape be changed, but each square within which they sit. So the colours, and where the circles and squares fall, are variable. In total there are 390 individual elements in 19 different colours.

The relief was made as a multiple in an edition of 3,000 giving the possibility of endless variety. Vasarely pioneered working in multiples, which he considered as a steppingstone for the unification of art and mass production. Planetary Folklore Participants No.1 was produced by William Wise in France and Editions Pyra in Switzerland, in collaboration with Denise René. Vasarely had helped to found René’s Parisian gallery and he had his first exhibition in Paris there. René produced a number of multiples by artists such as François Morellet [31268], as she, like Vasarely, wanted to rethink how the artworld functioned, making art available to all.

Of multiples, Vasarely wrote:

Today we are aware of the possibility of recreation, multiplication and expansion. Thus, together with craftsmanship, the myth of the unique work of art will disappear, and the multipliable work of art will triumph at last through the benefit of the machine.

Let us not fear the new tools which technique has given us. We can only live authentically in our own time. Achieving large-scale distribution is necessary to answer the vast demand which comes to us from the world. [1]

Planetary Folklore Participants No.1came with an instruction sheet, which opened with the line, ‘How to create an unlimited number** of your own original works of art or 3 original Vasarelys’. [2] The stars direct the reader to a note ‘** According to the giant computer of the Compagnie Internationale pour l’informatique, 78 Louveciennes, France, the mathematical possibilities for different original compositions are unlimited. (5,971,415,683,544,067 followed by 265 zeros or 28110). [3]

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