Seurat had shown that dots of colors are mixed in the eye; Albers proved the inherent instability of color fields; now Anuszkiewicz had discovered how to generate a color and trap it. By all accounts, The Responsive Eye, which finally opened at MOMA on February 23rd, 1965, was one of the major contemporary art events of the decade. It indisputably attracted the widest attention from the media and general public. This omnibus show of 123 paintings and sculptures by 100 artists from fifteen countries resolved some questions and left many others hanging. The curator, William C. Seitz, had had to shelve his original intention of tracing the historical roots of "optical" art because, after the 1962 announcement. "so rapid was the subsequent proliferation of painting and construction employing perceptual effects that the demands of the present left no time nor gallery space for a retrospective view."⁵³

In recognition of their 'old master' status, Vasarely and Albers were represented by six and eight works, respectively. Four of Albers' squares within squares hung together in an area called the Albers Chapel.⁵⁴ Their simple forms and subtly shifting colors inspired a hushed contemplation. The effectiveness of this space underscored what was lost when the show was revamped.

Although Seitz's essay attempted to connect the present with its precedents, the opportunity to view Albers' Homage to the Square next to Monet's Haystacks or Poplars, likewise the same subjects painted in varying colors, would have made the same point more effectively, even unforgettably.

Cut loose from its moorings in Impressionist opticality, The Responsive Eye lost its bearings. The best works spoke for themselves, but their voices were muffled in a din of eye-chart tricks. The common thread in the works selected was a general interest in putting pressure on the partnership of eye and mind. The techniques were age-old, dating back to the earliest abstractions; the applications were infinite, ranging from the superficially puzzling to something rather more. Vasarely used colored grids and Riley rippling lines to construct tightly wired patterns they then proceeded to sabotage with twists and warps, the point being the Tower of Babel futility of their own constructions. Anuszkiewicz brought an American pragmatism to the problem, promising a kind of shimmering perfectionism with roots in two great Pennsylvania painters, Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth. His pieces, when complete, as if to spite their amazing precision, quite mysteriously generate films and effects beyond the maker's control. But by addressing opticality as if it were a movement instead of a set of tools, The Responsive Eye forced a false equivalency on widely divergent work.. Imagine a Cubist exhibition with as many, if not more, pictures by Gleizes and Metzinger as by Picasso and Braque. The New Yorker made essentially this point in its review: "As always in art, the line between good and bad, success and failure, is fine-drawn. Why is Anuszkiewicz's All Things Do Live in the Three so beautifully effective, while the basically similar Nixe's Mate, by Larry Poons, is awkward and cluttered..."⁵⁵

Anuszkiewicz and Bridget Riley were the clear winners among the new faces, awarded the luxury of two works each.⁵⁶ This view was authoritatively confirmed before the opening by Seitz himself: "what has been called Optical Art is best exemplified among the younger generation, in color by the American, Richard Anuszkiewicz, and in black and white, by the Briton. Bridget Riley."⁵⁷ Grace Glueck wrote in The New York Times, "One of the brightest stars in 'The Responsive Eye,' the big optical art show that opens Thursday at the Museum of Modern Art is Richard Anuszkiewicz, who might already be called an op old master.

Anuszkiewicz, a virtuoso technician whose sizzling colors arranged in symmetrical bands, stripes and squares almost jump from canvas to eye, started exhibiting in New York back in 1960, long before the op trend was up."⁵⁸

Seitz wrote in the catalogue that "Optical painting such as that of Richard Anuszkiewicz sets itself off rather sharply from the work of the color imagists, notwithstanding the existence of works at the threshold between the two groups."⁵⁹