From Painting to Coding: The Art of Harold Cohen

Abstract

This paper offers an analytical and critical survey of the oeuvre of British artist Harold Cohen (1928-2016) who was a pioneer of computer art and the development of an autonomous media that would be equivalent to his own creative procedure. It will investigate and contextualise his work based on the principles of art history. Cohen reinvented his already well-established career as a painter inaugurating a new path in the arts utilizing a computer. In the 1950s and 60s, he delved into abstract art with the goal of producing a painting that could ‘paint itself’. When he encountered his first computer, in 1968, Cohen was able to bring this idea to fruition by coding software that emulated human cognition and learned what an artist’s everyday practice involves. This was his major and unique contribution to the field of media art and artificial intelligence. Thus, this paper relies partly on a vast bibliography and especially on interviews with the artist and visits to his studio to uncover the origin of art-making through coding developed by Cohen. Next, it examines the accomplishments of the programme named AARON that Cohen began writing in 1973. It was considered one of the oldest programmes still in development until April 2016 when Cohen passed away. Finally, this paper will pose the question: Can Harold Cohen, through his programme AARON, be the first artist who have a posthumous exhibition of new artworks created after his death?