The Infinite Line written by Briony Fer and published in 2004 is a book dedicated to a fertile period in visual art, the transition from Modernism to Postmodernism during the late 1950's until 1970. In eleven chapters, she offers enlightening discussions about seriality in art, including paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs, movies, through her vast knowledge of artists and their works.
With a dedicated topic for each chapter, Fir presentation stays focused on one subject, "the power and meaning of repetition". Starting with "Picture", moving on to "Series" and "Infinity", the progression smoothly leads to "List", "Mobility", reaching "Utopia" in the last chapter. Through her presentation of artists and their works, she makes the point and her expertise confers a scholarly quality to her discussions. She features numerous female artists like Eva Hesse, Agnes Martin, Yayoi Kusama or Louise Bourgeois and refers abundantly to the Arte Povera movement and its members. Sometimes arduous to read due to the abundance of referenced material, at the same time engrossing because of it, shedding light on Minimalism and its higher mission, the book is also filled with illustrations appropriately spread along the text.
The abrupt ending leaves the future opened to the use of repetition, ultimate mean of capturing infinity, a non-existent entity, and the addition of new chapters written about artists engaged in expressing the invisible.
photographs Wikimedia:
Untitled, Eva Hesse, 1967
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