Serial imagery

Serial art is a genre of modern art that seeks to create through the ranks, repetitions and variations of the same subject, topic or by a system of constant and variable elements or principles of an aesthetic effect.

Here are the individual objects - in contrast to the work group or variation - not only loosely connected by the subject, but by so-called image rules. These are those requirements that must be implemented in the individual work within the series. Another characteristic of the series is that it could be continued as a rule due to the interchangeability theoretically infinite. The implementation of the image rules the individual work loses its individuality and is theoretically interchangeable. The series therefore can be detected only in the content of the overall picture. At the same time the subject comes back compared to the presentation itself.

The historical starting point were Les Meules by Claude Monet (1890/1891), in which for the first time were also implemented more intuitive than conceptual, image rules and beyond the mere work group outgoing series was created. This work was also a starting point for the development of abstract painting, because the emphasis of the presentation to the sitter made ​​it easier for the viewer to recognize the work of art as self-employed compared to the subject and thus to detect the value of the work itself. Then the serial art has been temporarily concret limited to the basic elements of pictorial representation, color and shape by constructivism and nature.

Artists who have created serial art are, including Claude Monet with the already named Les Meules, Piet Mondrian, for example, with the compositions with lattice (1919), Ellsworth Kelly with Red Yellow Blue White ( 1952), On Kawara with Today ( since 1966) or with Sol LeWitt Cube (1988 /90).

From Monet's water lilies series:

1907