Serial Forms and Repetition

After World War II, manufacturers in the United States stopped producing things for the war effort and turned their focus to consumer goods. People were hungry to buy everything that was not available during the war, and companies created new mass production techniques to fill the orders.

Pop artists like Andy Warhol borrowed the materials, techniques, and imagery of mass production for their art. Warhol, for example, reproduced a newspaper photograph of a fatal car crash by silkscreening it onto a canvas with synthetic orange paint. Taking a cue from Pop artists, Minimalist artists used manufacturing materials and industrial fabrication in their work too, but left the images behind. Minimalists helped to challenge the idea that artists show us our world in a drawing, painting, or sculpture, each its own unique original. Instead, Minimalists adopted the techniques and materials of the factory, and showed us our new 1960s world of industrial, mass-produced beauty.