Harold Cohen

A major early abstract painting, All Four, 1964, highlights the continuity between Cohen’s initial
painterly practice and his later work with computational systems. Its looping biomorphic forms
and formal codification anticipating Cohen’s growing interest in digital structures, years before
he began programming computers.

The work featured in Cohen’s 1965 solo exhibition at the Whitechapel gallery in London.
Focussing exclusively on paintings produced between 1960 and 1965, the exhibition demonstrated
the breadth of Cohen’s practice during this formative period. It followed two years spent in
New York on a Commonwealth Fellowship and preceded Cohen’s inclusion in the 1966 Venice
Biennale as part of the Venice 5.

A pioneer in his progressive approach to thinking about and creating art, the paintings shown at
the Whitechapel marked a notable reorientation in Cohen’s practice. His time in the States had
a profound effect on his artistic outlook, shifting his style from Gestural Abstraction toward a
more rule-governed approach that prefigured his later developments in computer art. All Four is a
dynamic example of this transition. Painted on a bare ground, the distribution of motifs suggests
a landscape or map in which rivers, hillsides, and lakes are translated into abstract visual forms.
Layers are applied carefully, with the green gridded area both concealing and revealing the umber
contour beneath. The map-like composition evokes an aerial perspective, as disparate elements
echo and respond to one another across the surface. Its careful organisation demonstrates Cohen’s
emerging commitment to rule-based image construction, a principle that would later provide the
foundation for AARON.

A work from the same period is in the Art Gallery of Western Australia collection.