I went to Spain as a teenager and saw Guernica in person. It was the first painting to ever really have an effect on me. It's stunning. A perfect example of how art can transmit a message between people across time and space, I just knew that I was feeling how Picasso wanted me to feel.
If you have the chance to see this painting you should, no website can do it justice (although this is a very nice try).
the way this displayed in the Reina Sofia is fantastic. it’s set in its own room that you approach from the side so you get this experience of turning a corner and boom there’s Guernica. Gave me chills.
When we visited that room in 2012 or so the walls on the other 3 sides had Picasso's studies for the final painting.
The combination of those in proper size context to the astounding thing on that wall was... I dunno, very hard to bear? Chills and goosebumps. Just being in the presence of such genius. [Edited to add: I forgot! Many of the studies are clearly over complicated and colorful. And then you turn to see what was the final result. IMHO It's the same with genius software, in a different medium. Prose too, but maybe that's more contentious.]
There is no digital screen representation that can remotely approximate the psychic impact physical proximity to genius creates. I've felt this with many other greats as well.
I've sat alone in 3 different Rothko rooms. Damn. It's all I can say. You have to do it yourself. Tip: pan your eyes slowly while sitting in different corners.
It’s also perfectly contextualized. In the same wing, there’s a lot of contemporary art and ephemera from all sides of revolutionary Spain, including a model of the building in which Guernica was displayed at the World’s Fair in Paris. It’s almost poetic how it was essentially confined to a basement, as if the republicans were admitting they were on the verge of defeat by Franco.
It’s really one of those things that you have to see in person and walk up and down along to understand. The scale of it alone is a huge part of what makes it so memorable.
Somewhat similar in terms of the high resolutions of its images, I also want to recommend https://artsandculture.google.com/ which not many know about, it's a great resource to see and learn about art around the world.
Years ago the BBC would put on educational distance learning TV on Saturday mornings. It's where I first learned group theory [0] ...and all about Guernica [1]. Both memorable TV for a bored teenager.
I have been thinking about this painting a lot more in recent years because it always comes to mind when someone mentions AI art. It's arguably the most important piece by arguably the most important artist of the 20th Century (the "arguablies" are intentional, I'm not going to have that argument because that isn't the point of my comment, but including "arguably" makes them both statements of fact) and it's bleak, upsetting, and just flat out ugly, but that is all intentional and what makes it fascinating to look at. The goal of art isn't merely beauty. It's primarily communication. And this piece very clearly communicates the horrors of war. Sure, AI can make pretty pictures, but it can't make art because it has nothing to communicate.
Well, is Pixar’s Toy Story a work of art? Or what about Julia set renderings, where people make choices about the colors? ;)
Tongue-in-cheek aside, I do think I agree with you in that (1) art, as perceived by us human meatbags, is art because of the human element of it (if not in creation, then in perception), and that (2) AI absent explicit steering trends towards a rather bland medium.
But there’s art in everything from the blurry, out of focus, disposable film cameras, to a 5-year-old’s crayon scribble scrabbles, to the neon glitter themes we used to copy-paste over our geocities and xanga pages, and as frustrating as it is to our own sensibilities, an AI prompt “draw a pink elephant” isn’t all that different.
The element of creation is central to art. A painting or a photo of a sunset can be art, but the sunset itself is not art.
In addition, the communication doesn't need to be explicit or intentional. It can be communicating something antithetical to the artist's original intent like a blurry and out of focus photo. Or it can even be antithetical to the piece itself like a lot of modern art (Fountain[1] comes to mind). I'm also sure that the 5-year-old will happily tell you a story about why they scribbled what they did. I'm not diminishing any of those. But if all the person contributes is a prompt, the text of that prompt is the extent of their art.
I'm not a fan of AI "art" at all, but this particular attack does leave something to be desired.
Beyond aesthetic judgements of good/bad or intentional stance re: communication with others, there is such a thing as "process art" which could also be described as communication with oneself, or as kind of being locked into conversation with the medium, or with the universe. People will get distracted here and want to fight about whether Pollack is good, but I think that's missing the point. It just happens to be a very direct way of engaging with the dialectic tension of order / chaos that's incompressible, irreducible, and completely without substitute.. and that's just one of many dialectics you could explore.
Another self-communicative aspect of art is about exploring the limits and mastery of technique, where the details and result per se don't matter much. You can see this with a bunch of dorks building useless programming languages and doing amazing stuff with them, or see it with a smith at a forge. Someone will say this is about being a technician or a craftsman, but I'd say no, those activities typically have a practical purpose. Especially if you're doing this for the joy of it without even caring whether you're actively learning something you can apply elsewhere, then it's probably art.
I’m not sure what specifically you think you’re disagreeing with me about because I don’t see what you’re saying as incompatible with what I said. Communication with oneself or the rest of the art world is still communication.
What makes Pollock’s art “art” is the context in which it was created. It’s not like One: Number 31, 1950 would have the same reputation today if you sent it back a couple centuries in a time machine. It’s appreciated because it’s part of an ongoing conversation.
I had high hopes for the tiled image formats, which began with Microsoft Seadragon, a project they took on and closed down, as is the way. Fortunately someone forked OpenSeadragon, which is such an under-appreciated tool. Good to see an implementation.
If anyone wants to do their own tiled images, creating the tiles is the hard part, and the image processing toolkit VIPS will do that bit for you.
What a disrespectful (to the art) exposition. Imagine if the real picture was 10% covered by labels right on the picture, and whenever you moved a little bit to look closer at a particular area, another 20% of garbage labels appeared.
And apparently you can't just download the image to avoid that mess and try to enjoy art
(also, why are the "stitches" in the grid often visible?)
I went to Spain as a teenager and saw Guernica in person. It was the first painting to ever really have an effect on me. It's stunning. A perfect example of how art can transmit a message between people across time and space, I just knew that I was feeling how Picasso wanted me to feel.
If you have the chance to see this painting you should, no website can do it justice (although this is a very nice try).
the way this displayed in the Reina Sofia is fantastic. it’s set in its own room that you approach from the side so you get this experience of turning a corner and boom there’s Guernica. Gave me chills.
When we visited that room in 2012 or so the walls on the other 3 sides had Picasso's studies for the final painting.
The combination of those in proper size context to the astounding thing on that wall was... I dunno, very hard to bear? Chills and goosebumps. Just being in the presence of such genius. [Edited to add: I forgot! Many of the studies are clearly over complicated and colorful. And then you turn to see what was the final result. IMHO It's the same with genius software, in a different medium. Prose too, but maybe that's more contentious.]
There is no digital screen representation that can remotely approximate the psychic impact physical proximity to genius creates. I've felt this with many other greats as well.
I've sat alone in 3 different Rothko rooms. Damn. It's all I can say. You have to do it yourself. Tip: pan your eyes slowly while sitting in different corners.
It’s also perfectly contextualized. In the same wing, there’s a lot of contemporary art and ephemera from all sides of revolutionary Spain, including a model of the building in which Guernica was displayed at the World’s Fair in Paris. It’s almost poetic how it was essentially confined to a basement, as if the republicans were admitting they were on the verge of defeat by Franco.
It’s really one of those things that you have to see in person and walk up and down along to understand. The scale of it alone is a huge part of what makes it so memorable.
Somewhat similar in terms of the high resolutions of its images, I also want to recommend https://artsandculture.google.com/ which not many know about, it's a great resource to see and learn about art around the world.
Years ago the BBC would put on educational distance learning TV on Saturday mornings. It's where I first learned group theory [0] ...and all about Guernica [1]. Both memorable TV for a bored teenager.
[0] https://youtu.be/wdYzAAG2VXs
[1] https://youtu.be/vuPNBeWmuSk
I have been thinking about this painting a lot more in recent years because it always comes to mind when someone mentions AI art. It's arguably the most important piece by arguably the most important artist of the 20th Century (the "arguablies" are intentional, I'm not going to have that argument because that isn't the point of my comment, but including "arguably" makes them both statements of fact) and it's bleak, upsetting, and just flat out ugly, but that is all intentional and what makes it fascinating to look at. The goal of art isn't merely beauty. It's primarily communication. And this piece very clearly communicates the horrors of war. Sure, AI can make pretty pictures, but it can't make art because it has nothing to communicate.
Well, is Pixar’s Toy Story a work of art? Or what about Julia set renderings, where people make choices about the colors? ;)
Tongue-in-cheek aside, I do think I agree with you in that (1) art, as perceived by us human meatbags, is art because of the human element of it (if not in creation, then in perception), and that (2) AI absent explicit steering trends towards a rather bland medium.
But there’s art in everything from the blurry, out of focus, disposable film cameras, to a 5-year-old’s crayon scribble scrabbles, to the neon glitter themes we used to copy-paste over our geocities and xanga pages, and as frustrating as it is to our own sensibilities, an AI prompt “draw a pink elephant” isn’t all that different.
The element of creation is central to art. A painting or a photo of a sunset can be art, but the sunset itself is not art.
In addition, the communication doesn't need to be explicit or intentional. It can be communicating something antithetical to the artist's original intent like a blurry and out of focus photo. Or it can even be antithetical to the piece itself like a lot of modern art (Fountain[1] comes to mind). I'm also sure that the 5-year-old will happily tell you a story about why they scribbled what they did. I'm not diminishing any of those. But if all the person contributes is a prompt, the text of that prompt is the extent of their art.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)
Is building a technofeudal entity and bootstrapping pseudo-AGI art?
As a tool in the hands of a great artist, AI will make great art.
I'm not a fan of AI "art" at all, but this particular attack does leave something to be desired.
Beyond aesthetic judgements of good/bad or intentional stance re: communication with others, there is such a thing as "process art" which could also be described as communication with oneself, or as kind of being locked into conversation with the medium, or with the universe. People will get distracted here and want to fight about whether Pollack is good, but I think that's missing the point. It just happens to be a very direct way of engaging with the dialectic tension of order / chaos that's incompressible, irreducible, and completely without substitute.. and that's just one of many dialectics you could explore.
Another self-communicative aspect of art is about exploring the limits and mastery of technique, where the details and result per se don't matter much. You can see this with a bunch of dorks building useless programming languages and doing amazing stuff with them, or see it with a smith at a forge. Someone will say this is about being a technician or a craftsman, but I'd say no, those activities typically have a practical purpose. Especially if you're doing this for the joy of it without even caring whether you're actively learning something you can apply elsewhere, then it's probably art.
I’m not sure what specifically you think you’re disagreeing with me about because I don’t see what you’re saying as incompatible with what I said. Communication with oneself or the rest of the art world is still communication.
What makes Pollock’s art “art” is the context in which it was created. It’s not like One: Number 31, 1950 would have the same reputation today if you sent it back a couple centuries in a time machine. It’s appreciated because it’s part of an ongoing conversation.
Amazing thank you. Allows me to quote my favourite art anecdote:
When Picasso was interrogated by an SS officer about his painting Guernica, “Did you do that?” Picasso replied, “No, you did.”
I zoomed in as far as I could go and saw some occasional flecks of red. Is that just lint, or remnants of when it was defaced in the 70s?
I had high hopes for the tiled image formats, which began with Microsoft Seadragon, a project they took on and closed down, as is the way. Fortunately someone forked OpenSeadragon, which is such an under-appreciated tool. Good to see an implementation.
If anyone wants to do their own tiled images, creating the tiles is the hard part, and the image processing toolkit VIPS will do that bit for you.
What a disrespectful (to the art) exposition. Imagine if the real picture was 10% covered by labels right on the picture, and whenever you moved a little bit to look closer at a particular area, another 20% of garbage labels appeared. And apparently you can't just download the image to avoid that mess and try to enjoy art
(also, why are the "stitches" in the grid often visible?)