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The Art Of

The Series: Printmaking, Painting, & PFPs

Art / Blockchain

While we generally want art to be “original,” the series — whether it’s in printmaking, painting, or PFPs— offers us a different image of art where there is no original, only a network of versions. The relationship between the different versions form a kind of conspiracy as, together, they make up whatever “it” is. The “original” lives between, and as, each piece.


Posted July 9th, 2024 By mmERCH

The Logic of the Series is the Network

In general, we think about works of art as original, each piece one-of-one, an absolutely rare object created by an equally rare event—the artist’s inspiration. But there are works that are not one-of-one but, rather, one-of-one-of-x: the series, which enjoys a different logic, one that doesn’t rely on an original.

A series, whether it’s prints, paintings, or PFPs, operates with the logic of the network. There is no point of origin, no master mode, no hierarchy. What we get is versions upon versions, all interwoven, a cloud of images creating a kind of conspiracy. Together, they make up whatever “it” is. The original, if we can say there is one, lives between, among, and as each piece.

Perhaps ironically, by eliminating an original, the series fosters creativity. Rather than there being one singular thing, the series allows every element to be singular while connected to a larger network.

Printmaking: Warhol’s Marilyns

When we think of art series, we most likely think first and foremost of printmaking. Indeed, in its very structure, printmaking challenges the notion of the original. Working from plates, woodblocks, silkscreens, or any number of other technologies, including Xerox machines—there’s even an International Society of Copier Artists—printmakers can produce an infinite number of pieces. In which case, what could count as the original image? Perhaps the plate but, well, that’s an odd original in that it’s not really legible. So rather than think about the plate as the original, we can think of the plate as code that generates the images.

Of course, as scarcity drives value, by producing an infinite number of prints, an artist renders each print near-worthless. Which is why fine art printmakers generally create limited, numbered series — 1-of-x — after which they destroy the plate, ensuring there will be no new pieces in that series. (This is one place the blockchain comes in handy, authenticating each work while proving no new ones have been created.)

Take Warhol’s Marilyn series of 10 silkscreens. Which is the “original”? You might say it’s the found image he was working from — which isn’t even in the series, isn’t even considered “art” but rather is found cultural detritus. Presenting Marilyn in different hues and shades, Warhol takes her from the claws of mass media to give us something else—the star-as-image, inherently plastic, malleable, a series of possibilities, of moods. Once she’s been taken up by the media and turned into an image, Warhol tells us, is there still just one original Marilyn?

Painting: Monet’s Haystacks & Richter’s Cage Paintings

While printmaking seems inherently to produce series, we tend to think of paintings as singular, each an original work of art. But painters have series, too. Monet, for example, painted a series of series — from water lilies to haystacks.

For Monet, haystacks are not one thing you can point to or hold in your hands. Rather, haystacks are a sensibility, a mood that doesn’t reside in any one stack but lives in, and between, them all. After all, things exist in time. They change. And so Monet paints them in their different forms, in different light, in different seasons.

In a sense, Monet’s series of haystacks is like a Cubist painting where each painting is another side, another perspective, of haystacks. We know the original haystack by seeing the series of haystacks.

Or take Gerhard Richter’s Cage Paintings, a series of six canvases he painted while listening to the music of John Cage. In this case, we don’t get different perspectives on a thing. Instead, we get iterations of a mood, of ways John Cage can inflect life — in this case, how it inflect Richter’s painting process. In doing so, Richter even displaces himself as original. Rather than playing “master” conjuring worlds, he explicitly positions himself as conduit between Cage, painting, and canvas. And as he’s a living conduit, and Cage’s music is different at different times, the series allows for fluctuations, for difference to emerge.

PFPs: CryptoPunks and Milady Maker

In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of the PFP, profile pictures often sold as NFTs which are authenticated on the blockchain. As the name suggests, they are indeed profile pictures people use for their social media accounts. Most often created through generative algorithms, each PFP is unique while being part of a collection.

An early, and perhaps the most well known, collection is Larva Labs’ CryptoPunks — 10,000 unique pixelated characters. Each is singular yet some have rarer traits, or a rarer number of traits, than others. For instance, while there are five different types — male, female, zombie, ape, and alien — there are 6,039 male punks but only nine alien. Each type then enjoys some set of traits such as glasses, pipes, hoods, shades, beards, and so on.

PFPs might in fact be the clearest example of a series without original. After all, what would, what could, be the original? The algorithm, perhaps. Akin to the printmaker’s plate, though, the code isn’t really legible. And, as with printmakers, PFP creators destroy their code after production.

But what makes PFPs particularly intriguing is that they don’t just efface an original image, they efface the owner’s “original” identity. While Richter, in his Cage series, displaces himself as master, PFPs displace the artist and the owner as original.

As CryptoPunks appear across the internet, they form a network as the collection of one-of-one artworks become a collection of one-of-one people. Which, in turn, has created a community — not in the generic sense of that word but actual community: people interacting with each other, online and IRL.

And here’s the thing: it’s not just a community but it’s this community. The CryptoPunks community is certainly not the same as the Milady Maker community. Which is to say, the series is not just a neutral series but it creates a space, a mood, a sensibility of that community, a way of interacting that is particular to it. In a sense, a series is a differential equation on calculus: a particular, and infinite, trajectory.

Which is precisely what community is: it’s a series! While politicians tend to think of “community” as uniform, communities are decidedly not homogeneous. And not all communities are the same. PFPs communities show us that communities are series of distinct, unique voices that operate within the terms of that series: a particular collection of one-of-one-of-x.

The Beauty of a Post-Original World

While we tend to think of art as the creation of originals, the logic of the series — whether it’s in printmaking, generative art, or painting — gives us a different vision of art: not a one-of-one but a network — collections of difference.

The logic of the original has a way of shutting down creativity. The logic of the series, on the other hand, is generous, fostering difference and togetherness. One might say it’s the anarchist dream, allowing for all these different versions that are interlinked, working together not to unify but to distribute this or that sensibility. It encourages individuals to be individuals while connecting them to each other.

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