Frank Popper

Frank Popper
Frank Popper in 2006
Born	(1918-04-17) April 17, 1918 (age 98) Prague, now Czech Republic
Citizenship	Dual French and British citizenship
Alma mater	University of Paris VIII
Known for	Historian of art and technology

Frank Popper (born April 17, 1918) is a historian of art and technology and Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the Science of Art at the University of Paris VIII. He has been decorated with the medal of the Légion d'honneur by the French Government. He is author of the books: Origins and Development of Kinetic Art, Art, Action, and Participation, Art of the Electronic Age and From Technological to Virtual Art.

Popper documents the historical record of the relationship between technology and participatory forms of art, especially between the late 1960s and the early 1990s. Sharing his focus on art and technology are Jack Burnham (Beyond Modern Sculpture 1968) and Gene Youngblood (Expanded Cinema 1970). They show how art has become, in Frank Popper's terms, virtualized.

In his books Origins and Development of Kinetic Art and Art, Action and Participation, Popper showed how Kinetic Art played an important part in pioneering the unambiguous use of optical movement and in fashioning links between science, technology, art and the environment. Popper has been a champion of the humanizing effects of such an interdisciplinary synthesis.

Key to his initial thinking and activities as an aesthetician, cultural theorist, curator, teacher, and art critic was his encounter in the early 1950s with the kinetic artist (and author of the book Constructivism), George Rickey. He subsequently encountered the artists Nicolas Schoffer and Frank Malina, whose works were based on first or second-hand scientific knowledge. Also Op Art in the early 1960s had a powerful effect on him. Indeed, Op proved to be a strong predecessor to what he is calling Virtual Art in that Op Art called attention to the spectator's individual, constructive, and changing perceptions - and thus called upon the spectator to transfer the creative act increasingly upon him or herself. Op beckons forth a consideration of the enlargement of the audience's participatory role; both in regard to the perception of meaning and actual physical changes to the work of art. Popper also has had many personal encounters in Paris with Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visual, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Yaacov Agam, Jesus-Rafael Soto and Victor Vasarely which proved to have had a substantial impact on his view of art and art history.