# Harold Cohen artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/harold-cohen/
Profile generated: 2026-08-24T12:42:38.677Z
Quality: medium confidence, adequate sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1928-05-01
- Death date: 2016-04-27
- Nationality: British
- Movements: Computer art, Artificial intelligence art
- Common media: Painting, Drawing, Computer-generated art

## Portrait

![Harold Cohen](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/Harold_Cohen_%28artist%29.jpg)
Harold Cohen (artist) · see-source-page
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Cohen_(artist)

## About Harold Cohen

Harold Cohen (1928–2016) was a British artist and programmer whose practice encompassed painting, drawing, computer art, and artificial intelligence. He is best known for AARON, a long-running software project developed to produce visual art. This sustained investigation placed Cohen in the early history of artistic computing while maintaining a close relationship with the established media of drawing and painting. Authority sources describe him as an English painter and computer artist active in the United States, and public identity records are maintained by institutions including Tate, MoMA, Getty ULAN, Wikidata, and major library systems. Collectors may therefore encounter his name on conventional studio works as well as computer-generated or AARON-related material. Accurate identification depends on distinguishing the medium and determining whether a particular object has a documented connection to AARON. Cohen's work is especially relevant to histories of computer art, generative image-making, and the use of artificial intelligence in visual practice.

## Common works and media

Works encountered under Harold Cohen's name may include paintings, drawings and other works on paper, computer-generated images, and material associated with AARON. Because his practice crossed physical and computational media, catalogue descriptions should identify the actual process and support any claimed AARON connection with documentation. The collected sources do not establish common edition sizes, recurring subjects, or a complete hierarchy of work types.

## Market and appraisal context

Appraisal should begin by identifying whether a Harold Cohen work is a painting, drawing, computer-generated image, or documented product of the AARON project. Those categories should not be treated as interchangeable when selecting comparable sales. The collected sources do not provide lot-level evidence about condition, provenance, editions, or individual prices, so these details must be established from the object, accompanying documentation, and relevant auction records. Where public sales are available, comparisons should prioritize works with a similar medium and relationship to AARON, while also considering sale date and the completeness of the catalogue description. The artist's historical importance in computer art does not by itself determine the value or authorship of a particular object.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine artist-identity research with available auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots. For Harold Cohen, the present source pack supports the core identity and AARON context more strongly than detailed lot-level market conclusions.

## Sources

- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q92723
- Tate: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/harold-cohen-925
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500018282
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Cohen_(artist)
- Wikipedia: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Cohen
- Appraisily: https://appraisily.com/artist/harold-cohen/