Art and Technology Exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

Five years in the making and organized by Maurice Tuchman, Art and Technology was an attempt to involve industrial firms (and their machinery) in the production of art. Tuchman aimed “to ‘bring together the incredible resources and advanced technology of industry with the equally incredible imagination and talent of the best artists at work today.’” Tuchman aimed to pair artists with leading technological corporations such as IBM in a residence program for a twelve week period. This gave artists the opportunity to access facilities, research, technology and equipment that would otherwise be unavailable. The resulting artwork was exhibited at LACMA in 1971. Altogether, 76 artists participated including modern masters such as Andy Warhol, Ellsworth Kelly, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Victor Vasarely and Roy Lichtenstein. It also included computer and generative art pioneers such as Robert Mallary, Robert Rauschenberg, Eduardo Paolozzi, Hans Haacke and Otto Piene. Any ambitious attempt to pair art and corporations was going to experience blowback and Art and Technology certainly did. Grant Taylor in When the Machine Made Art explains: “Max Kozloff in his Art Forum piece ‘Multimillion Dollar Art Boondoggle’ gave what [Jack] Burnham described as the ‘most vicious, inflammatory, and irrational attack ever written on the art and technology phenomenon.’ Kozloff depicted the artists involved in the ‘lavishly funded’ [Art and Technology] project held at the Los Angeles County Museum as ‘fledgling technocrats, acting out mad science fiction fantasies,’ while the ‘more sophisticated artists he envisaged as cynical opportunists.’” Despite changing political winds about the combination of technology and art, reluctance from the art world to embrace the corporatization of art and the enormous undertaking the program entailed, Art and Technology stands as a groundbreaking and visionary event that challenged traditional notions of practice, creativity and authorship.