You seem to mistake popularity for acceptance. Warhol was hugely controversial in his day, especially in the beginning of his career (the Campbell Soup expo?). Most great artists are controversial, because they tend to push the status quo until it shatters.

And tone down the ad hominem, this isn’t reddit, we’re just having a conversation about art.

Hey, I have that banana duct taped in my living room! 🤣

Art is subjective, always has been. I remember visiting a modern art museum in Germany years ago, and seeing a weed growing at the base of the wall in one of the rooms. Looking closer, I could see the weed was a very lifelike bronze cast, but in that moment the juxtaposition was jarring enough to make me question what art really is. I doubt it will have the same effect on everyone, but for me that was significant. And memorable, as you can see.

Of course not, and I was not implying that either. I was merely illustrating the influence of technology on artistic expression.

Case în point: silkscreen collages, to stay in the analog domain. Andy Warhol is widely recognised as an artistic genius these days. That wasn’t the case iback then.

No judgement, mate, art is a matter of taste. Always has been.

My point was more along these lines: every single piece of AI imagery in the public space has been selected and put there by a human. We are the feedback loop in this space. And if the vast majority of it sucks, well, that’s saying something about the people doing the selection, doesn’t it?

I read an article recently about the difficulties of using AI by artists in animation studios, which partly inspired my original reply. Sure, AI is great at, say, generating a magical fairy forest. But if it’s almost good enough and you want it to do small, incremental improvements to an existing image, that’s where it fails. Sure, it will generate another magical forest, but even using almost the same prompt can lead to wildly different results.

To wit: for me and you, almost is probably good enough. But that’s not the case for a professional.

The man is a genius, no doubt about it. I didn’t know about the mathematical analysis of his paintings though, that’s really cool. Thanks for the link.

I do, but not for the reasons you think.

What makes a Jackson Pollock painting so valuable? I’ve heard time and again people saying “I could do that too”, “it’s just paint thrown at canvas” etc. But it’s not the actual paint on the canvas that makes the painting. It’s Pollock’s aesthetic sense that chose that color, that pattern, and that’s what you get to see when you look at his paintings. It’s an image that said something to him, and we have decided to put value on that.

The vast majority of AI generated imagery is not art just like the vast majority of people throwing paint at canvas won’t get a Jackson Pollock painting. It might become art if used by an artist with purpose and intention. Which at the moment is pretty hard, given that small, iterative adjustments are really hard to do with AI. But in the end, AI is yet another tool that would allow humans a bit more freedom of expression.

It used to be that a painter had to literally prepare his palette from raw ingredients. Then he could buy pre-made paints. When digital art came along, we gave up paints entirely. Now we skip the painting part. The one common thread though is the honest expression of intent, and the feedback loop given by the artist’s aesthetic sense. If either is missing, you get kitschy garbage. And that’s most AI generated imagery these days.