Grids  Grids      Algorithmic Art  Algorithmic Art       Root  Radical Art       

Repetition

Identical or similar images or objects, arranged in grids.




Wassily Kandinsky:
Farbstudie Quadrate, 1913


Ellsworth Kelly: Cité, 1951



Bernd & Hilla Becher:
Fachwerkhäuser, 1959-1961



Piero Manzoni:
Achrome (Pane), 1961



Klaus Staudt:
Seriell Betont, 1961



Oskar Holweck:
Reibflächen V, 1961



Donald Judd: Untitled, 1961



Andy Warhol:
Green Coca Cola Bottles, 1962



Andy Warhol:
25 Colored Marilyns, 1962



Gene Davis, Untitled, 1962



Parmentier: 7 Bandes, 1966



Louise Nevelson: Homage to the World, 1966



Donald Judd: Untitled, 1966



Robert Morris:
Variant Arrangement, 1966



Carl Andre: Equivalent VIII, 1966

 

Grids        More repetitive paintings by Andy Warhol     


 
About Andy Warhol's Grid Paintings

 

It seems that the salient metaphysical question lately is: "Why does Andy Warhol paint Campbell Soup cans?" The only available answer is "Why not?" (...) Actually it is not very interesting to think about the reasons, since it is easy to imagine Warhol's paintings without such subject matter, simply as "overall" paintings of repated elements. The novelty and the absurdity of the repeated images of Marilyn Monroe, Troy Donahue, and Coca-Cola bottles is not great. Although Warhol thought of using these subjects, he certainly did not think of the format. (...) The gist of this is that Warhol's work is able but general. It certainly has possibilities, but it is so far not exceptional.

Donald Judd: "Andy Warhol," Arts Magazine 37 (January 1963), p. 49.

 

. . . in concentrating on this boundless monotony, we find the sudden illumination of multiplicity itself – with nothing at its center, at its highest point, or beyond it – a flickering of light that travels even faster than the eyes and successively lights up the moving labels and the captive snapshots that refer to each other to eternity, without ever saying anything:   suddenly, arising from the old inertia of equivalence, the striped form of the event tears through the darkness, and the eternal phantasm informs that soup can, that singular and depthless face.

Michel Foucault: "Theatrum Philosophicum", Language Counter-Memory Practice ,
trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca, 1977), p. 189.


A day will come when, by means of similitude relayed along the length of a series, the image itself, along with the name it bears, will lose its identity. Campbell, Campbell, Campbell, Campbell.

Michel Foucault: This is Not a Pipe, trans. James Harkness (Los Angeles, 1983), p. 54.

 


Sources

Donald Judd's review is entirely reprinted in: Alan R. Pratt (ed.): The Critical Response to Andy Warhol. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997, pp. 2-3.

The Foucault quotes are from Gary Shapiro: "Art and its Doubles: Danto, Foucault, and their Simulacra" In: Mark Rollins (ed.): Danto and his critics   (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), pp. 134-135 and p. 129.

 

 

RS, 2006