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Experiments in SERIAL ART, 1962
Extract from the 1962 exhibition notes
INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ARTS
17 - 18 Dover Street, London, W.1.
Library Exhibition
EXPERIMENTS IN SERIAL ART
Lionel March
Open from 17th October to 24th November, 1962
Lionel March was born at Hove in 1934. He received his early education at the Hove Grammar School where, in 1952, he invented an algebra of n-dimensional numbers which received wide publicity. In 1954 he went to Magdalene College, Cambridge, and read mathematics. He then studied architecture for five years at the University’s School of Architecture. During this time he designed many stage sets, including three for the first London productions of new operas at Sadler’s Wells, in particular Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress (1957). He is now teaching in the School of Architecture and researching into the problem of choice of techniques in housing production. This study is to be pursued further in the United States as a Visiting Associate at the Joint Center for Urban Studies, Harvard and MIT, from January 1963.
“The works exhibited are experiments in ‘structure’ in the sense used by Bertrand Russell. It is evident that different phenomena may have similar structures, as for instance do a musical score and the music as played. Which is the work of art? By A. N. Whitehead’s definition the latter, since it alone is a ‘lure for feeling.’ I am not satisfied that any of the works exhibited represent the kind of proposition Whitehead refers to: or shall I say that the feeling when lured is slight. This is because the use of serial techniques (with almost half a century of musical tradition) have not been applied to the plastic arts until very recently. Despite this, techniques such as thematic, or ‘set’, reversals seem more easily justified in the plastic arts than in music: rotation, translation, permutation, combination, interference, polyrhythm and so on are all immediately meaningful in visual terms. However, the technical problems are such that they have dominated my work since my first serial experiments made in late 1960 and the Permatrix of early 1961.
Throughout recent years my thoughts have been guided by Klee: particularly The Pedagogical Sketchbook and the essay On Modern Art. I believe that the techniques explored in this exhibition may one day be utilized to produce truly original ‘lures for feeling’: the techniques have not been sought for their own sake. Colour is used to distinguish elements of the structure and not per se: I am now working on full colour experiments”.
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