ABSTRACT
On the cover of the exhibition catalogue Systemic Painting was a definition of “systemic” taken from the Oxford English Dictionary: “3. gen. Arranged or conducted according to a system, plan, or organised method; involving or observing a system.” And “system” was defined in the same source as “a set or assemblage of things connected, associated, or interdependent so as to form a complex unity; a whole composed of parts in orderly arrangement according to some scheme or plan.” Anatol Rapoport uses the word “systemic” in opposition to “strategic” [“Systemic and Strategic Conflict,” Virginia Quarterly Review, XL/3 (1964)], the latter being characterized in Game Theory by conflicts partly shaped by bluff and psychology, as defined by Von Neumann. Joseph H. Greenberg [Essays in Linguistics (Chicago, 1963)] uses “systemic” to mean “having to do with the formulation and discovery of rules” in “actually existing sign systems.” That part of linguistics, however, that calls on psychology and the social sciences he refers to as “pragmatic.” In line with these usages, my attempt here is to provide a general theory, within objective limits, of the uses of systems by recent abstract artists.
