Generative Art Timeline · Chapter 5: Artist-Programmer Era (1970s)

1972

Harold Cohen’s early work exhibited at LACMA

Exhibition · North America

A Harold Cohen drawing of 1972 — nine machine-drawn freehand-line figures, some in dotted stroke, scattered across the sheet — from the pre-AARON body of work first shown that year at LACMA.
A Harold Cohen drawing of 1972 — nine machine-drawn freehand-line figures, some in dotted stroke, scattered across the sheet — from the pre-AARON body of work first shown that year at LACMA. Harold Cohen, Untitled (i23-3578), 1972. Courtesy the Harold Cohen Trust and Gazelli Art House.

Cohen’s exhibition, Three Behaviors for the Partitioning of Space, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art presented his early, pre-AARON computer drawings. This came after Cohen arrived at the University of California, San Diego as a visiting lecturer in 1968, becoming professor and department chairman in 1969, and learned programming from Jef Raskin.

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

Sources

People

Harold Cohen, Jef Raskin

Movements

computer art

Filed under

Ideas
drawing, education
Technologies
computer art, programming
People
Harold Cohen, Jef Raskin
Works
AARON
Exhibitions
Three Behaviors for the Partitioning of Space
Organisations
LACMA, UC San Diego
Places
California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, San Diego

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