Penny Plain Suite

Penny Plain Suite, 1980 Six offset lithographs of drawings made by AARON, the drawing program Harold Cohen began writing after joining Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 1971. Each sheet reproduces one of the program's freehand-looking line drawings — closed forms, hatched volumes, zigzags and horizon lines spread across an imagined landscape — printed in black on cream wove paper, signed and dated in pencil and numbered from an edition of 50. In these years Cohen often coloured AARON's black-and-white drawings by hand; the title echoes the old toy-theatre phrase "penny plain, twopence coloured." This set, numbered 25/50, was a gift from Cohen to Ann Lewin-Benham, founder and executive director of the Capital Children's Museum in Washington, D.C. In the late 1970s Cohen painted a floor-to-ceiling mural from AARON drawings in the museum's main stairwell, projecting the drawings onto the wall, tracing them in black and then painting them in colour while visitors watched. Lewin-Benham framed the prints in bright red frames and lent them to the museum, where they hung near the mural so the public could see Cohen's technique up close. One sheet is inscribed to her by Cohen: "For Ann — in friendship."