Serial Imagery: Definition*
John Coplans, 1968.
*Originally appearing as the section titled ‘Definitions’ in Serial Imagery published by the Pasadena Art Museum and the New York Graphic Society, September, 1968. I have read the essay in Provocations: Writings by John Coplans, London Projects, 1996, pages 77- 92.
“Serial Imagery is a type of repeated form or structure shared equally by each work in a group of related works made by one artist. To paint in series, however, is not necessarily to be serial.” (77)
“Serial structures are produced by a single indivisible process that links the internal structure of a work to that of works within a differentiated whole.” (77)
“There are no boundaries implicit to Serial Imagery; (...) Though often painted in sets, (...) Serial Images are nevertheless capable of infinite expansion. There is no limit to the quantity of works in a Series other than what is determined by the artist. Once established, a Series may be kept open and added to periodically in the future.” (77)
“Serial Imagery furthermore ignores the rational sequence of time. Series can be cut off at any point (...); re-entered later (...); or continued and extended indefinitely (...).” (78)
Macro-structure:
- Understood by relational order and continuity, not by distance, number or magnitude.
- All the units are interchangeable. (no hierarchy)
- No two contradictory positions can be deduced from the whole; variances (sub-groups) may occur but the macro-structure within these variances is consistent to the structural identity of the whole. (consistency within variety)
“Meaning is enhanced and the artist’s intentions can be more fully decoded when the individual Serial work is seen within the context of its set. (...) Consequently each work within a Series is of equal value; it is part of a whole; its qualities are significantly more emphatic when seen in context that when seen in isolation.” (79)
HOWEVER
“Each single work in a Series must be complete in itself and therefore may be shown in isolation. Furthermore, in some Series the appearance of the paintings, if they are exhibited as a set, will be affected by the sequence in which they are hung.” (79)
Four Serial forms in mathematics:
1. Have neither a first nor last element
2. Have a first but no last element
3. Have a last but no first element
4. Have both a first and a last element
Coplans presents Stein’s Serial poem “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” as an example of having both forms 1 and 4.
Stein’s monogram of the poem in a circle with a dot at the top between ‘Rose’ and ‘Rose’ creates a starting and stopping point.
(80)
Minus the dot, with the verb ‘is’ between ‘a rose’ and ‘a rose’ there is neither a first nor last element; an infinite continuum structure that when visually depicted in the next instance shows the symmetry that is formed.
(80)
Skipping ahead in the text to where Coplans again refers to Stein’s poem, to balance the value of the verb (is) the value of the noun (Rose), its repetition, Stein took “advantage of its innate capacity to evoke multi-levels of meaning and image. (...) Rose (Francis) is a rose (flower) is a rose (color) is a rose (perfume) is a rose (gem) is a rose (compass card), etc.” (83)
Note to self: this is important when I discuss homonyms and ‘gesture’. The multiplicity of meanings of the noun, the context in which it appears and the multiplicity of elements of identity understood in the contexts in which these appear.
“All contemporary usage of Serial Imagery, whether in painting or sculpture, is without either first or last members. Obviously, at one point, there had to be a beginning - (...) - but its identity becomes subsumed within the whole, within the macro-structure. The same principle applies to the last member. (...) sequential identity is irrelevant and in fact is lost immediately on the work’s completion.” (81)
Stein often misquoted her own poem (deliberately or not is questionable).
A pack of cards where all the cards are of equal value (Coplans ex. Ace of Spades), printed with the same emblem in a variety of size, color or position would be another example of the basic structure of Serial Imagery.
Artist examples - Josef Albers and Ad Reinhardt; both created Serial forms implying “the use of a structure whose order is inherent but concealed.” (81)
Reinhardt:
“His method of facture, consisting of a layer-upon-layer application of flat paint over a pre-existent image, left traces of a ‘local’ time-track. (...) As the paintings got blacker they got more and more neutral. The formal importance of Reinhardt’s painting therefore resides in its quality of indetermination, its neutral emptiness. (...) What Reinhardt set into motion was the idea of a network of choices and limitations which were performed but not logically apparent on the surface of the picture or within the whole Series.” (82)
Frank Stella:
“... exploit Serial despositions of a higher order. (...) By varying the linear image he asserted the individual identity of each painting within the overall system. (...) It is only coincidental to his system that the internal modulations and the stretcher thicknesses are the same. (...) the vectors of his internal imagery are consequently disparate and energetic.” (82-82)
Stein-Reinhardt-Stella:
“In Reinhardt’s Serial Imagery the threshold of difference between each painting is so low as to finally deny difference, though it is true each painting occupies a different space. Stella, on the other hand, created a unique identity for each painting by using simple, bilaterally symmetrical network of images, which, in effect, were variants of the same image. In this way he preserved an absence of hierarchy; each image was equal in rank. Each image at the same time asserted its own identity with its own evocative potential, so to speak, in the manner of Miss Stein’s rose. Moreover, Stella’s paintings can be positioned in random order; the time-flow is non-sequential.” (83)
Joseph Albers - Frank Stella:
“...the duration between Albers’ paintings is compressed, and the time-flow more nearly reversible. Music, poetry, and dance, by the very nature of their form, can only flow forward in time.* It is impossible to play music, to read poetry or to dance backward. In one form or another Claude Monet, Alexei Jawlensky, Marcel Duchamp, Mondrian, Albers, Klein, and Reinhardt have all proved in their Serial investigations that it was possible to make time relative and to reverse its flow. But it was Stella, who was soon to be joined by Noland, Louis, Andy Warhol, Larry Bell, and somewhat later, Kelly, who began a sophisticated dialog involving the non-sequential possibilities of Serial forms that rapidly led to a new plateau of achievement. (...) Stella discovered that the permutations -the typical, possible distributions which are strategically central to Serial order- can be varied at will. That there are no limiting rules to this strategy is reminiscent of Wittgenstein’s remark: “Language is a ‘game’ the rules of which we have to make up as we go along.” “ (84)
“To be sure, Serial Imagery, though systematic, does permit unknown variables.” (85)
Anton Ehrenzweig: (the artist) “cannot anticipate all the possible moves that are open according to the rules which [he is] still making up, … (he) can handle ‘open’ structures with blurred frontiers which will be drawn with proper precision only in the unknowable future” [italics are Coplans] (85)
Note to self: Serial imagery presents open, not closed, systems/structures in the sense that:
“...internal order can become random, providing the parameters of the macro-structure are systematically maintained.” (85)
Note to self: This seems contradictory that if there are boundaries one would think the system/structure is closed. However, if one shifts perspective to the freedom/openness found within the boundaries...the free space in between, the gap, then this is not contradictory at all.
“Stella’s intention (...) to give each painting a supra-identity.” (86)
Note to self: the following relates closely to Brian O’Doherty’s writings on relationship of the work to the exhibition space in Inside the White Cube.
“It must be remembered that in Serial Imagery the exhibition space becomes a component. Only when paintings of a Series are exhibited together in a gallery space do the parameters built into the paintings and their reciprocal quality begin to operate. By permitting the paintings to bite into the wall space, and the wall space to bite into the shaped canvas, Stella added another reciprocal parameter to his system; he emphasized the space by forcing it and the painting to become attached.” (86)
Coplans address the role/use/application of color in Serial Imagery pages 87-88.
Process:
Serial Imagery is not about the ‘masterpiece’ but about the proces. Process is an open system of progression at a steady pace - continuity and productivity, according to Coplans. Process “can be decoded and adapted to any personal use. Once process is understood, an artist can enter into the dialogue at any point. It is a choice of “realm” that is important and not uniqueness of “subjects”. (89)
Back to the ‘white cube’...
“More than any art in the past, the dialogue of Seriality is taking place in public; it is a gallery and not a studio art.”(89)**
“Serial forms reveal very easily the complexity of the artist’s decisions and the nature of his enterprise as a whole.” (89)
Lack of hierarchy means there is no ‘best’. Hmm, see Coplans recollection on selecting the better of two Stella's in the essay Pasadena's Collapse and the Simon Takeover: Diary of a Disaster, page 180-181 of this book.
“The crucial factor is again the choice of realm, the way each painting fits within the chosen structure: that is, whether the postulates of each painting are consistent with the others in such a way that no two contradictory propositions can be deduced within a Series. Thus criticism must address itself to the largest entity. The task of the critic (...) is to ask what is there and what is the nature of the experience. (...) simply to describe this experience is to in some way evaluate it.” (90)
“(...) the Serial artists (...) attempt to describe with the structure of art our perception of the space we inhabit.” (90)
* Since Coplans wrote this there is reason to contest the validity of the statement based on digital technology applied to these areas. I am also thinking of Twyla Tharp’s experiments with video recording of dance to express ‘true retrograde’ in the late 1970s.
**There is a lot of something to be said about this and how it has developed in the 50+ years since the essay was written.