Cover Art: Joseph DiStefano, E=mc^2
Copy Art
Copy art is art made with the aid of a photocopier.
Since 1970 there have been
at least a dozen books
and scores of exhibitions devoted to copy art.
There is a society of copy artists
(International Society of Copier Artists, 800 West End Ave.,
Suite 13-B, New York, NY 10025),
a quarterly journal
(Arnyekkotok, 1034 Budapest, Timar u. 17. fsz. 3),
and even a museum of copy art, the
Museo Internacional de Electrografia in Cuenca, Spain.
I have not found that much copy art on the Web, just a
scholarly bibliography
and Klaus Urbon's retrospective (recommended).
The allied forms of
Artistamps
and
Mail Art
currently have a greater Web presence.
Why use photocopiers to make art?
One reason is simply
to produce multiples of a picture.
Photocopiers offer immediate low-cost reproduction,
making copy art a spontaneous and democratic art form.
Copy art is often exchanged as mail art
outside the official forums of galleries and shows.
Photocopiers find more sophisticated use
in collage, as they enable
found images to be easily resized and combined.
As artist Shirley Watts puts it,
"A photocopy machine turns an artist into a hunter-gatherer".
Joe DiStefano's piece above
is a mixture of collage and painting, in which tiled photocopies
serve as a sort of underpainting.
The Humanscape shown on
the right, one of a series by Michael Lewis
and Nena St. Louis,
is a meticulous collage formed from architectural elements.
The most interesting applications of the photocopier
lie outside the normal range of the machine.
Copy artists routinely use the degradation of
multiple-generation copying for interesting effects.
They move objects as the light bar sweeps by to create
distortions and dissolves.
On a color copier, motion adds colors not present in the original.
Some wilder techniques involve human bodies, animals (geckos are good,
cats will do),
mirrors, and fire!
Finally, conceptual artists play with the philosophical issues
raised by copy art: authorship, authenticity, uniqueness.
One well-known piece is a random book, consisting of multiple-generation
copies of a blank page; the first page is white and the last one black.
Xerox PARC hosted a copy art show in 1993 with over 100 artists
from six different countries.
The catalog shown above (designed by Ylva Hagner three
years before she
disappeared)
is available for free.
Contact
Marshall Bern.
Michael Lewis and Nena St. Louis, Humanscape
This page updated December 1999 / bern@parc.com