critical thinking

[totient]

A bunch of folks who think they know what art is are debating whether AI art is art over in the convention-running social medias.

So far every criticism I've heard is also true of someone whose works sell for millions of dollars. Kruger, Rauschenberg, Banksy, edited to add: Koons. (Did you know that a Rauschenberg recently sold for $89 million? I didn't until today, but I'm pleased that the reaction of the art world seems to have been "it's about time".)

Ultimately I think the question is meaningless. Is any given image art? If so, at what point did it become art, and how? To my mind, the first question is much more about what happens after it's finished than what happens beforehand. Trying to classify things as art according to their creation is absurd.

Comments

[lehser]

Yeah, it was interesting. My 100-year-old grandmother studied art (with Albers, among others), and taught public school art for a number of years. When we mentioned the AI art controversy, she said, "It's no different than how artists have been operating forever! None of them actually execute (all) their own art!"

Not saying she's right, just pointing out that an old-school art person, who might be expected to be appalled, was far from it. FWIW.

[totient]

This is a particular criticism of Jeff Koons. Or maybe it's a criticism of a lot of artists, but it's more significant with Koons because Koons is such a polarizing figure among art critics, or more cynically because Koons' art doesn't (according to the artist!) have any other significance.

Still, it actually hadn't come up in the FB discussion in question, and so I'll go ahead and add Koons to the list of commercially hyper-successful artists in the top post.