The Expanded Eye takes a concerted look at the experimental side of art: here seeing means insight. The Expanded Eye presents paintings, objects, film and video installations from the 1950s to the present day: a spectrum that takes equal account of the playful experiments of postwar art and the radically altered premises of recent artistic practice. The Expanded Eye shows how the horizons have widened in art, as abstraction has become dematerialization which has in turn led us into fluid, hybrid universes where very different levels of reality mingle. The removal of past barriers reflects the changed role of the artist as an explorer who has a playful side and who actively empathizes with his or her addressees, namely the public at large.The publication also contains an anthology of texts from the most diverse subject areas from artist statements by Lucio Fontana and Josef Albers to theoretical essays by Rudolf Arnheim and philosophical texts by Georg Kubler and Teilhard de Chardin.