Systemic painting - systems art

DEFINITION

Descriptive of the initial phase of Conceptual Art in the 1960s and 1970s, the term was used in 1968 by Jack Burnham in an "Artforum" article, 'Real Systems Art'. Two years earlier, Lawrence Alloway curated "Systemic Painting", an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, which featured color-field and hard-edge painting that had "systemic variations on a single geometric motif, such as a circle or chevron."(Atkins, 69). The reference is technical with a somewhat elusive-seeming meaning, but relates to mobility, meaning artwork that moves or appears to move in a controlled manner. Artists involved include Marcel Duchamp and Neil Williams. Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_art; Robert Atkins, "ArtSpeak"