It's Freak Week at Sotheby's (the auction house's annual large science series with a focus on nature, technology and space), and there are so many things in the history of science and technology that promise to make a lucky art collector very happy. Unambiguously labeled as algorithmic art, it's easy to ignore more flashy products such as Wozniak and work-built Apple-1 computers or the crypto-based machine based on the World War II. Not to mention the headline teenager ceratosaurus nasicornis bones and literal pieces of Mars snapped up on a simultaneous natural history sale.
The auction house describes about eighty works as “a broad archive of early computer art” from the 1950s to the 1970s, including Vera Molnar, Manfred Mohr, Christian Cavadia, Aldo Giornini and many others. It's already exciting for a particular collector – someone invested in the hierarchical history of many now viewed it as one of the art movements we define at all times.
Despite being ridiculed for a long time, digital art (a broad term) covers everything from pixel-based painting to code-based works to NFTS, so many people like to hate it. And, as I wrote before, this is nothing new. In 1965, some exhibitions in some computer art exhibitions, including Georg Nees “Stuttgart on the Howard Wise gallery in New York and Technische Hochschule’s Generative Computer Grafik on “Computer Generative Pictures”, the first widely attended computer art exhibition, “The Network Unified Computer and Art,” is London, and has opened its scope for three years and London.
Today, computer art, as a genre, connects post-war conceptualism with contemporary digital practice. For collectors interested in passing lines, the works in this batch (listing both critical decades as important) are crucial: without algorithmic plotter drawings, there will be no generated NFTs; without early software experiments, there will be no AI artwork. Of course, no matter whether it is a good thing, it is in the eyes of a lover. Earlier this year, Christie’s enhanced intelligence auction prompted the revocation of the petition, but artists working with technology have long had to justify their choices. “Although it has advantages, computers have more simpler tools than other, but there is no guarantee that high-quality art will be produced, because it is the artist's skill that is the decisive factor.” Leonardo 1975.
It is worth noting that many early practitioners of computer art (not only artists, but mathematicians, engineers and computer scientists) have worked for decades, often without the support of gallery systems. Their contributions have not been properly historical until now, meaning that their work is often underrated culturally and economically underestimated relative to its impact.
This brings us back to Sotheby's of Sotheby's Trove of Algorithmic Art, which initially estimated to be sold for between $10,000 and $15,000, and at the time of publication it was a high price of $26,000. While the low price and long list including artists are certainly striking, the greater appeal may be that every piece on paper or canvas (from 10.5 x 14 inches to 38 x 49 inches), the same as the collection of Grace Grace Hertlein, the personal art pioneer. Hertlein received fine art training but professionally rooted in computer science, hosted her first exhibition in 1969 and continued to introduce countless people to computer art, both as a professor of Comp Sci and editor of magazine computers, characters, and computer graphics and art. In her 1977 article, she prophetically suggested that “the full meaning of computer art and computer-controlled textile systems may be the next 'industrial revolution, where computer design (computer-assisted, produced textiles) can enhance the private and industrial environment.”
For anyone fascinated by the ever-evolving chapters of art history and the people who shaped it, the fact that these works are seen as worthy of preservation is important. Other artists represented in the collection include Javier Sequi, Jean Claude Marquette, Karl Martin Holzhauser, Solded Sevilla, Ben Laposky, Edward Zajec, Ruth Leavitt, Herbert W. Franke, Jean-Charles Truout, Diazos, TM Stephens, Duane Palyka, Paul Shao and Kenneth Dunker—a group whose practices, taken together, form What Sotheby calls “a kaleidoscope snapshot of early decades of art history and technological phenomena.” This early computer art has long been ignored by the mainstream and has only been recognized now, providing collectors with a rare opportunity to have the origin story of the algorithmic era.
