Serial art

Campbell's Soup Cans , Andy Warhol

Serial art is a genre of modern art that aims to create an aesthetic effect through rows, repetitions and variations of the same object, theme or through a system of constant and variable elements or principles.

The individual objects - in contrast to the group of works or variations - are not only loosely connected by the subject , but by so-called image rules . These are the specifications that have to be implemented in the individual works within the series. Another characteristic of the series is that it could theoretically be continued indefinitely due to the interchangeability. By implementing the picture rules, the individual work loses its individuality and is theoretically interchangeable. The content of the series can therefore only be grasped as a whole. At the same time, the subject takes a back seat to the representation itself.

The historical starting point was Les Meules by Claude Monet (1890/1891), in which for the first time, albeit more intuitively than conceptually, pictorial rules were implemented and a series was created that went beyond the mere group of works. This work was also a starting point for the development of abstract painting , because the emphasis on the representation compared to the depicted made it easier for the viewer to recognize the work of art as independent from the subject and thus to grasp the value of the work itself. As a result, serial art was temporarily limited to the basic elements of visual representation, color and form, through Constructivism and Art concrete .

Artists who have created serial art include: a. Claude Monet with the already mentioned Les Meules , Piet Mondrian z. B. with the compositions with grid (1919), Ellsworth Kelly with Red Yellow Blue White (1952), On Kawara with Today (since 1966) or Sol LeWitt with Cube (1988/90).

From Monet's series Water Lilies :

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  1907

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  1907

literature

• John Coplans (Ed.): Serial Imagery . New York 1968, ISBN 978-0-01976-661-6 .
• Katharina Sykora : The Phenomenon of the Serial in Art . Würzburg 1983, ISBN 978-3-88479-118-9 .
• Karl Duschk : system and series . Leonberg 1983, ISBN 978-3-92276-011-5 .