Bob’s sketch of Elaine de Kooning (1951)

Published by Robert Mallary Media and Archive

First Minting

In collaboration with Spiritual America.

Images from the Mallary Archive.

SA: 00

ROBERT MALLARY

COMPUTING ART

Robert Mallary (1917–1997) was among the

ﬁrst artists to make the transition from the material

sciences to computer sciences. He rose to national

prominence during the early 1960s in the New York

art scene as a “Neo-Dada” trash artist. During this

period his work was frequently exhibited in group

shows with abstract expressionist sculptors, such

as in “Sixteen Amerians” at the Museum of Modern

Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art

annuals. At the height of his fame he exhibited

his sculpture “Cliangers” at the 1964 New York

World’s Fair, and was a recipient of Rockefeller,

Guenheim, and Fulbright grants.

Among his closest friends, collectors, and

associates were Elaine and Willem de Kooning,

Richard Diebenkorn, Wayne Thiebaud, Philip

Johnson, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and his art

dealer Allan Stone. Ultimately his experimenta-

tion with plastic resins would severely poison him.

ough lasting health consequences forced Mallary

to put New York Ci and the prominence he had

gained behind him, it allowed him to realize new

creative horizons.

A lifelong academic, in 1967 Mallary became

a professor in the art department at the Univer-

si of Massachuses at Amherst. With access to

an IBM 1130 in the universi computer lab, he

understood then that computers would unlock

the future of artistic potential. He shared this

A Short History of QUAD

by Mason Whitehorn Powell

concept with his son Michael Mallary, an engineer,

physicist, and MIT graduate, and together they

wrote a program that generated the ﬁrst computer

designed sculpture.

Together, Robert and Michael Mallary

developed a Fortran computer program named

TRAN2. From two contour proﬁles drawn by the

artist, consisting of the X and Y coordinates, four

points on ellipses were read o graph paper and

then transferred onto punch cards. e cards were

read by the IBM 1130 and ploer print outs on the

IBM 1627 revealed the layers of the sculpture to be

constructed. According to Michael Mallary: “Aer

reading the data cards, TRAN2 calculated hundreds

of connected contour points (i.e. points on the slice

perimeter) for each horizontal slice.”

What the program had calculated were

the layers of the sculpture and “the plot for each

layer was then glued to a sheet of plastic or wood

and the slice perimeter was manually cut with a

band saw. All of the slices were then stacked and

bonded together.” e layers were then sanded and

ﬁnished. Atop a wooden base, the resulting QUAD

sculptures hint at a classical inﬂuence and the

human form, while retaining a distinctive modern

approach. Mallary had arrived at an early form of

additive 3D printing.

“The computer is portentous, because for the rst

time the sculptor has access to a tool which can

be used not only for executing a work of art,

but conceiving one as well. It has already been

demonstrated that the computer can assist the

sculptor to some degree; in the future it may,

in eect, come to collaborate with him.”

—Robert Mallary,

Artforum

, May 1969

First TRAN2 Plot (1968)

QUAD Prole Printouts (1968)

Archival photos of QUAD (1968)

Overleaf: Plotter drawings (1972)