Generative Art Timeline · Chapter 4: Digital Era (1960s)

1966

Untitled (one gallon of industrial high-gloss enamel, poured) by William Anastasi

Artwork · North America

A gallon of black industrial enamel poured down a white gallery wall and pooling on the floor, in the Mattress Factory's installation of William Anastasi's poured-enamel work.
A gallon of black industrial enamel poured down a white gallery wall and pooling on the floor, in the Mattress Factory's installation of William Anastasi's poured-enamel work. William Anastasi, One Gallon High Gloss Industrial Enamel, Poured on an Incision. Courtesy Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh.

This piece stands as an important example of chance in art as well as an early conceptual and material generative art piece. Anastasi, the American Conceptual art pioneer, focused on relinquishing artistic control and submitting to chance operations. In Untitled, he poured a gallon of industrial paint down a wall and let gravity dictate the final form.

Text by Peter Bauman. Generative Art Timeline, Le Random, fact-checked September 2026.

Sources

People

William Anastasi

Movements

Chance Art, conceptual art, generative art, Material Generative Art

Filed under

Ideas
abstraction, authorship, chance, Chance Art, conceptual art, generative art, gravity, Material Generative Art, materiality, process
People
William Anastasi
Works
Untitled (one gallon of industrial high-gloss enamel, poured)

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