thetic advantage. Hill describes the often other-
worldly results of her manipulations:
This stocky, unrevealing box stands 3 feet high without
stockings or feet and lights up like an Xmas tree no
matter what I show it. It repeats my words perfectly as
many times as I ask it to, but when I show it a hair curler
it hands me back a space ship, and when I show it the
inside of a straw hat it describes the eerie joys of a
descent into a volcano.
(Hill 1979, 7)
With respect to such transformation of subject, the
notion of a machine which copies the literal appear-
ance of its subjects becomes increasingly inadequate.
Xerographic portraits, while perhaps first cre-
ated by countless inquisitive office workers ex-
perimenting with the copier’s unconventional
capabilities, have been widely explored, especially
in the form of self-portraiture by artists such as
Joan Lyons in works such asUntitled (Woman
with Hair), 1974and William Gray Harris, such
as in his one-of-a-kind color work,Self Portrait,
1973. Artist Dina Dar challenges the notion of the
endless reproducibility of the object of the copier’s
lens through her use of the ephemeral subjects of
flowers and foods, as in her 1978 work,Slow Boat
to China. The use of collage techniques in the crea-
tion of xerographic images is central to many
artists’ work. The seamless construction of imagery
through collage has been adapted to both fanciful
formal compositions and social and political com-
mentary. Artist Carl Chew’s 1979 work George
Eastman Hunting Elephant with Stampcreates a
contemporary metaphor in the juxtaposition of
collage elements about commodity value in its
depiction of the photographic pioneer on an Afri-
can safari toting a postage stamp of his prey in
place of his gun. Artist Peter Nagy uses xero-
graphic collage toward overtly political ends, such
as withPasse ́isme(1983), which rearranges histor-
ical markers in a non-linear configuration, aligning
such disparate elements as a Jasper Johns’ piece
with a Mesolithic rock shelter. Artist William Lar-
son utilizes xerography in the creation of unique
artists’ books, which address the idea of the degen-
eration of imagery and the abstraction of visual
information through successive recopying.
Wide-spread public awareness of xerography
practice did not occur until the early 1970s when
several small group and solo exhibitions were
mounted. The first major museum exhibition of
xerography,Electroworks, was held at the Interna-
tional Museum of Photography at George Eastman
House in 1979 and included 250 works. This title
had likewise referred to numerous exhibitions
mounted in the United States and Canada during
the 1970s. The related movement of Mail Art served
to expose a broader public to xerography specifi-
cally outside of the parameters of the museum con-
text. First practiced in the early 1960s by artists
such as Ray Johnson and E.F. Higgins II, founder
of a vein of this movement called the New York
Correspondence School, who conceptualized the
mailbox as museum, Mail Art consists of xero-
graphic works in the form of postcards and other
pieces of mail, which in their widespread dissemina-
tion through the mail served as both an alternative
form of public exhibition of their art and a way to
generate a network of xerography artists working in
similar veins. While the prevalence of xerographic
practice began to lessen in the United States in the
1980s, interest with many European artists, espe-
cially in France, Belgium, and the former West
Germany, expanded in that same decade, culminat-
ing in key international exhibitions such asElectra
at the Muse ́e de l’Art Moderne in Paris in 1983. Of
particular prominence is French artist and teacher
Cristian Rigal, who in addition to his own work in
the medium he calls Electrography, has established
a collection and resource center called El Museo
International de Electrografia in Cuenca, Spain.
KarenJenkins
Seealso:Artists’ Books; Non-Silver ProcessesFurther Reading
Anonymous. ‘‘Mechanizing the Muse.’’Artnews79, no. 2 (1980).
Fifield, George. ‘‘Electrophotoxerographcopyinstantart.’’
Views3, no. 1 (1981).
Gonzalez, Marisa. ‘‘Copiers, Motion and Metamorphosis.’’
Leonardo23, no. 2/3 (1990).
Griecci, Patricia. ‘‘Through the Eyes of a Machine.’’Views
4, no. 3 (1983).
Howell-Koehler, Nancy. ‘‘Copy Machines.’’The Creative
Camera. Worcester, MA: Davis Publications, Inc., 1989.
Lovejoy, Margot.Postmodern Currents: Art and Artists in
the Age of Electronic Media. Ann Arbor: U.M.I.
Research Press, 1989.
McCray, Marilyn, ed.Electroworks. Rochester, NY: Inter-
national Museum of Photography at George Eastman
House, 1979.
Sheridan, Sonia Landy. ‘‘Generative Systems.’’Afterimage
March 1975.
Sheridan, Sonia Landy. ‘‘Generative Systems versus Copy
Art: A Clarification of Terms and Ideas.’’Leonardo16,
no. 2 (1983).
Sikkema, Brent, ed.The Inner Landscape and the Machine:
A Visual Studies Workshop Exhibition of the Work of
Sonia Landy Sheridan. Rochester, NY: Visual Studies
Workshop, 1974.
Wickstrom, Richard D., ed.Sonia Landy Sheridan: A Gen-
erative Retrospective. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa
Museum of Art, 1976.XEROGRAPHY