Will the Real Picture Please Sit Down?

O-o-o-o--POP! That was the way the eyes had it one evening last week at the preview of an exhibition of op art held by Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art. Origin of that uncertain feeling was not only the 123 pieces of calculated retina-wrenching on the museum walls. Many of the previewers seemed as bent as the artists on manipulating the wandering eye.

Gisela Oster, for instance, whose husband Gerald had two black and white eye foolers in the show, gave him some dazzling competition with a turquoise-and-white-striped evening coat over a turquoise-and-white-striped long dress, but Sculptor Marilynn Karp outstriped her by running her black and white stripes from dress to stockings to shoes. Painter Jane Wilson was completely optical in a sleek, hooded sheath of white organdy, delightfully dizzy in disks of black and grey. Magazine Editor Pat Coffin wrapped herself in a giant silk stole of peristaltic black dots on a white field that was designed by Painter Bridget Riley, whose op offerings in the show were titled Current and Hesitate. Teacher-Painter Ruth Ann Fredenthal sported a polychrome print that showed Designer Emilio Pucci to be quite an Operator after all.

Op-outfitted ladies showed a tendency to linger near the pictures that best harmonized with their clothes. Collector Barbara Jakobson flitted among the black and white opticals, seeming to appear and disappear in a skin-tight jump suit with ostrich-feather cuffs under a "cage" of black chiffon, latticed with black velvet. Another black and white effect, frequently mistaken for a painting when it was standing still, was the calfskin coat by Furrier Jacques Kaplan, stenciled by Op Painter Richard Anuszkiewicz in a dotty pattern that focused disturbingly on Mrs. Lee Lombard's pretty kidneys.

The male previewers, in their black and white identical uniforms, could barely be distinguished by the color of their eyes (redder going out than coming in) and whether or not they wore beards. One notable exception: Painter Larry Rivers, no opster with a brush, who blurred the vision by wearing two neckties--one red, one blue-and-white-striped--on a button-down shirt covered with dime-size green polka dots.

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