“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” Pablo Picasso
It was a paperback by Sue Roe – In Montmartre – Picasso, Mattisse and the Birth of Modernist Art. Planning a workout, I tucked the book under arm, ambled to my nearby gym, plopped onto a stationery bike, and peddling at a speed suitable for the slow lane, read an Introduction that slowed my roll. Here’s a few of the points that brought my legs to an eventual standstill:
“…in Montmartre between 1900 and 1910, there was a spirit of iconoclasm at work. With the rise of photography as an artistic medium, the painters’ previous ambition of imitating life in art now belonged to photographers…The aim of painting was now to find way of expressing the painter’s own response to life…”
“The decade saw the emergence of major artistic discoveries as well as significant social change. Young artists weary of decadence and satire were already looking for new subjects and novel, more rigorous methods of painting which reflected their feelings about their lives….”
“The years that saw the birth of modern art were those directly following the turn of the century, before the Great war…in the cafes and cabarets of Montmartre. The unknown artists who gathered there and lived closely overlapping lives are now household names.”
Why my acute, exercising-ending interest? Other than welcoming any excuse to rest, I’m fascinated by the origins of art, the evolution of art, and the artists themselves. So I was keen to learn what happened back in the day in this hillside Parisian Bohemia besides being the historic home of Moulin Rouge. And although my bike wheels were idle, my mind was spinning around a question:
If new technology at the start of the 20th Century contributed to a change in the way artists sought to express themselves, how is new technology of today, specifically, AI, impacting artists?
I thought this a worthy inquiry. But I did not have an answer. So I asked around, starting with Jason Kurtz, a leading psychoanalyst in New York City and an award-winning playwright. Here’s his take on the topic:
“I have two thoughts on this. The first is that the one thing AI can’t do is replicate community, so doing projects with other people – playing in a band, working on and being in play, the kind of collaborative work that is really special and human, will be the kinds of things we need to lean into, as opposed to writing a book or composing a song, things we do solo which AI can do in a heartbeat.
On the other hand, collaborating with AI may become the modern way we make art. There’s already a book called The AI 10 Commandments: A New Moral Code for Humanity by Jamie Metzl and Chat GPT that is perhaps the first example of this. Maybe we’ll need to partner with AI, provide the direction and creativity, and work with the incredible speed and power and intellect that AI offers.”
Not long after receiving Jason’s response, I saw his first thought modeled in a new music video (“Storm II”) from GENER8ION featuring Swiss rapper Yung Lean. What propelled the video into the viral stratosphere was the choreography by French artist Damina Jalet. It involved Lean, surrounded by young men dressed as prep students, moving to a thumping beat in a disjointed yet connective manner. While the dancing is surprising and stirring, much of the praise for the work centers on it “not” being AI generated. The consensus in countless comments: “AI-created videos still don’t have the soulfulness of those created by people themselves.”
Back in the early 1900’s, a similar criticism fell upon photography. The painters detailed in Roe’s book were acutely attuned to this discontent. Sensing an opportunity to make their creative mark and tap into an emerging market for art imbued with a “human element,” they explored ways to express themselves with a brush, counter to what could be done with a camera. Andre Derain, co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse, explained that he and his modernist peers “were reacting against anything resembling a snapshot of life.”
Roe’s book also describes how the imaginative sparks generated in Montramarte during those early years of the 20th Century were not just being emitted by painters. Paul Poiret, for example, was changing the direction of fashion with his colorful patterns while employing a “structural simplicity” to his designs (he dismissed both the petticoat and the corset, and used a draping technique rather than flat pattern cutting). which proved pivotal in the emergence of modernism.
Poiret, credited with making couture an art form, made money for this achievement. Lots of money. I mention this because the connection between creativity and capitalism can not be overlooked when it comes to changes in art. With a nod to a college course I took on Karl Marx, my theorem on the connection follows: (1) an artist, say Poiret, has a radical idea; (2) the radical idea becomes reality – the dress is made; (3) the dress is well-received; (4) the dress becomes a commodity to be sold; (5) the dress (the line) does well and competitors make “copycat” pieces for the market; (6) an industry is born; (7) a new designer has a new radical idea to make a dress; (8) the process starts anew.
The point is that most, if not all of us, require some level of income to survive and/or thrive. To this end, throughout history the work of artists has been influenced by patronage, honed by competition, and given space in public based on an ability to make a profit. Yet very few artists ever reach their full potential (and become wealthy) by focusing solely on the buck, so to speak. Inspiration does not come from any one well, but arises from a confluence of the interior and the exterior – what is inside the artist, and what is outside.
Like how a storm forms from the mixing of warm, moist air with cold, dry air, the impetus to create, to bring forth that radical idea, comes from a collision of stimuli against situation. Here’s an example.
I know a top executive at a consumer products company. He has been traveling non-stop for months, is exhausted, all while dealing with a profound family loss. At the same time, AI is penetrating his business, limiting a need to interact with staff, and thus diluting the excitement of shared discovery and of risk-taking. In sum, his work environment has become stale and non-spontaneous. But this is the type of personal and professional “stew” that begets new beginnings. To this end, this individual had an epiphany on how to make changes, i.e. a radical idea: develop a product that “refuses the digital age”; not just artisanlly made, but brought to market on deep, high-touch human connections exclusively.
I’m not sure what will come of this product – if it will become real, or remain just an idea. There is no way to know. And that, when I think on all this, answers my question about AI and how it will impact artists: we just can’t know for sure. And that’s good, because when we do know for sure, AI will also know. It is the unknowing that is human, the courage to take chances and step into a future without assurances. AI can’t do that. We can. This comforts me. And energizes me. I’m no longer afraid of what AI will do to us humans, or the artists of the world, but excited to find out what we will do because of it.
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