Serial art

movement c. 1960-1975 United States Switzerland

Serial art is a movement within conceptual art in which elements or objects - frequently uniform and machine-made, such as bricks - are assembled in systematic ways. One kind produces multiple works in sets or series: Josef Albers' square paintings repeat a single image as a chain of variations, a technique later taken up by minimalism, the 'multiple', and ABC art. A more essentially serial kind arranges equivalent representations in nonhierarchical juxtapositions that yield their meaning only through mutual relationship, like a twelve-tone row - visible in Max Bill's Fünfzehn Variationen über ein Thema and Richard Paul Lohse's systematic color series. By the early 1970s artists such as Carl Andre, Robert Smithson, Nancy Graves, and Lynda Benglis built large fabricated pieces from repeated modules. As Sol LeWitt wrote, the serial artist 'functions merely as a clerk cataloguing the results of his premise'.

Floor piece no. 1 (Cube structure based on nine modules) (Vloerstructuur nr. 1) Artist: Sol LeWitt (1979) Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Floor piece no. 1 (Cube structure based on nine modules) (Vloerstructuur nr. 1) Artist: Sol LeWitt (1979) Museum Boijmans Van BeuningenCC BY 2.0 (credit: Rob Oo from NL) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Repetition of uniform, often machine-made elements or modules
  • Systematic ordering principles governing placement and variation
  • Nonhierarchical juxtaposition: equivalent units read only in relation to each other
  • Serial variation: one premise iterated across sets of works
  • Modular fabrication from mass-produced parts (bricks, metal cutouts, cast units)
  • Cool, impersonal execution - the artist as clerk of a premise

Key figures

  • Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) — Conceptual artist whose serial structures and grids defined the serial attitude
  • Carl Andre (1935-2024) — Minimalist floor sculptures of repeated mass-produced units
  • Max Bill (1908-1994) — Concrete artist whose serial variation series anticipated the movement
  • Josef Albers (1888-1976) — Painter whose repeating square paintings became the model of the series

Example works

  • Fünfzehn Variationen über ein Thema — Max Bill (1934-1938)
  • 30 vertikale systematische Farbreihen in gelber Rautenform — Richard Paul Lohse (1943-1970)
  • Serial Project No. 1 (ABCD) — Sol LeWitt (1966)

Sources

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