Leslie Schiff, Seasons 1981 Photo Color Copier Print Photograph Museum Collected Art Xerography, 1980-1981

SEASONS (1981)
This is for the single print listed here. (not the outside folder or title sheet)
Title: Man in Profile. This one is not hand signed although the rest in the portfolio were. (it might just have been an oversight and been missed)
Seasons explores the seasons of Man, Woman, Child, Civilization, Nature and Technology. First digital artwork purchased by the Metropolitan Museum.
Date: 1980-1981
Medium: vintage color photocopy print.

“I worked at The Metropolitan Museum in 1981, when they acquired [Lesley’s] SEASONS portfolio.
We knew we wanted it, even though we didn’t have a category for it.” David Kiehl, Curator of Prints and Special Collections The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City.

Lesley Schiff (born 1951) is an American fine artist. Schiff studied painting at the Art Institute Chicago before developing her signature practice using color laser printers to create images. Her work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Mead Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other major museums, corporate and private collections globally. Lesley Schiff revolutionized the photocopier from being an office tool to just another instrument in the artist’s arsenal. Rather than addressing the tool in her work, Schiff instead uses the photocopier like a paintbrush to realize her vision. Once a painter, Schiff says: “I never intended to stop painting. I just decided to start painting with a modern tool. Working with the color laser printer keeps you in your culture. It’s like America. Plugged in. Electronic. Direct.” Painting with light, Schiff’s body of work outlines a cycle of life: man, woman, child, civilization, nature, technology. More recent works challenge the viewer to understand the concept of eye-levels and perspectives, reinventing the way we see. Schiff’s work was the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s first digital acquisition, and most recently, was featured at the Whitney Museum of American Art in “Experiments in Electrostatics”.
She uses a color laser printer “like a paintbrush” to create her art. She has said about her work and her tool: “I never intended to stop painting. I just decided to start painting with a modern tool. Working with the color laser printer keeps you in your culture. It’s like America. Plugged in. Electronic. Direct—but no matter how hi-tech my tools become, I’m a painter, but instead of painting with oils, I paint with light.

The Whitney Museum will show Lesley Schiff’s pioneering SEASONS portfolio in its entirety. Many prominent collections acquired SEASONS as their first digital artwork.

She participated in the Punk Art show in the 1970’s. Her work kind of relates to Fluxus and Dada.
Leslie Schiff moved from Chicago to New York in the early 1970s. Much of her art involves collage and the Xerox photocopy machine. Her images are rooted in her personal psyche and have an intuitive meaning that is not always easily understood. In exhibitions, Xerox sheets are combined and displayed decoratively on the wall. Schiff has also created books; and made video and sound tapes. She was included in the seminal New York/New Wave 1981 exhibition show at MoMA PS1 along with Jean-Michel Basquiat, William S.Burroughs, David Byrne, Larry Clark, Crash (John Matos), Ronnie Cutrone, Brian Eno, Nan Goldin, Keith Haring, Ray Johnson, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Mapplethorpe, Kenny Scharf, Steven Sprouse, Andy Warhol and Lawrence Weiner.
She did a “visual biography,” comprised of portraits of Bob Dylan—depicted at different ages, from his 20s to his 60s—illustrations of his lyrics, and images of iconic objects like his sunglasses and harmonica. Schiff collaborated with Matthew Carter, the Cambridge-based, award-winning designer who designed the classic Verdana and Georgia fonts, among others.
Decades before computer programs and smartphone apps made digital manipulation commonplace, the photocopy machine offered novel ways to transform images.
When it first came about, this technology was truly groundbreaking. It wasn’t just offices who loved photocopiers; artists soon started to make use of innovative techniques in a genre which has come to be known as photocopy art, xerox art or electrographic art. Edward Meneeley, Lesley Schiff, Robert Whitman all used his medium.

Selected Collections

The Museum of Modern Art. MoMA, New York City
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
The Whitney Museum of Art, NYC
Buckingham Palace, London
Columbia Records, New York City
Trafigura LTD – London
JP Morgan – New York City
Canon USA – New York City
Goldman Sachs – New York City
The New York Public Library – New York City
Yale University Art Gallery – New Haven, CT
Gianfranco Ferre
Mick Jagger

Selected Exhibitions

2018 – Metropolitan Museum of Art
2017 – Whitney Museum, New York
– Weinberger Fine Art – Kansas City,MO
2002 – Gallery Arte Wallhop – Basel, Switzerland
– Alexia Goethe Fine Art – London
1999 – Galerie Mesmer – Basel, Switzerland
1998 – Galerie Mesmer – Basel, Switzerland
1995 – Wyndy Morehead Fine Arts – New Orleans
1994 – Mangel Gallery – Philadelphia
1993 – Ariel Gallery – Atlanta
1992 – Rockefeller Townhouse – New York City
1991 – Staley Wise Gallery – New York City
1990 – Nippon Art Gallery – New York City
1988 – Montana Moon Gallery – Chicago
1984 – Chicago Cultural Center – Chicago
1977 – The Basel Art Fair – Switzerland
– Mike Steiner Gallery – West Berlin
1976 – The Kitchen – New York City
1975 – 3 Mercer Street – New York City
1974 – The Aldridge Museum – Greenwich CT

Lecturer
Art Institute of Chicago
Syracuse University – Syracuse,NY
School of Visual Arts – New York City
Pacific Design Center – Los Angeles
Seattle Art Museum
Ariel Gallery – Atlanta, GA

Seminars
The Art Institute of Chicago
Syracuse University – Syracuse, NY
Southern Methodist University – Dallas, TX
The International Center of Photography – New York City
The School of Visual Arts – New York City

Education
The Art Institute of Chicago, BFA Painting, 1974