Beauty

“The attraction of art is the humanity held in it.”

Yes it is and I think that’s a genius sentence. I’ve been an artist my entire life and I’m not even really certain what that means. One of my battle cries has been, “everyone is an artist!” and I believe it. You can artfully dress or cook or garden or paint. I think we all have the part inside us that wants to create. For me it’s about adding some presence to what I do. And honestly, having zero concern about how anything actually looks.

What’s been concerning me for a while now is the direction “art” in general is headed. For the last 40 years I’ve been lookin at annual publications in the art and design industry. And whoa have they changed, dramatically. Who cares?, you say! I care. I think we all should care.

Tarot decks are a guilty pleasure of mine. I can hold, in my hands, mini art!, actual reproductions of paintings or collages or photographs of incredible subjects in my hands, flip thru them, be inspired by them, be in awe of them. For each deck I get to be inspired 78 times. 78 mini pieces of art. Come on, what could be better? The trend now is everyone is making a deck, and many are using AI (artificial intelligence or AI from now on here). 

Understanding exactly what AI does is out of my realm. But I am paying attention. A nephew of mine explained it to me in simple terms, thank you very much. He works in the language realm of AI. A computer will never make a grammatical error because we can tell it how not to. AI can pull reference from tons of already written works, it’s all the libraries at your disposal. 

AI for art samples already created art, art created BY HAND, or photographs already taken showing body structure, specific colors locations, subject-matter, you get the idea. AI for art samples tons of images and creates a conglomeration of them all. Supposedly, if I were to paint a pig, and AI sampled from MY painted pig, no one would be able to know it was based on my art. Well yippee for that. Thousands of real pieces of art sampled to create a new piece. Is that art? I suppose having a good eye, knowing color and contrast and composition is worthy, but still…

Do you have any idea how hard it is to make money as an artist? I won’t even take you there because it’s only a rant. Do you have any idea how often my work, my art, my actual art made by my hands and my experience and my time is stolen, given no credit and sometimes made money from what’s stolen? I hear you, we have bigger things to worry about in this world, climate, war, the zillions of grasshoppers overtaking our meadow, but this is my work, my job, my living. 

No, not boo hoo for me. I’m talking big picture concerns here. Is AI ok? I feel, currently, that AI has some incredible applications. Like in medicine it can help diagnose the zebra in the room, those with rare ailments. That sounds like a solid application to me, so yes, AI is ok. 

Should it be helping students write papers, no, I don’t think so. Isn’t part of writing figuring out how to think, how to put ideas together, how to organize? So no, AI is not ok.

Should AI create art? That depends. If you make art using AI, just label it as such. “This art created using AI.” If you didn’t use your hands or your brush or paint or a marking instrument to make the art, or even a stylus on the computer, then no, you didn’t make art. You were skillful telling the computer what to do, you were great at resourcing real art from many places. Maybe you even have a good eye and know what decent art should look like and you’ve succeeded. But you gotta name it. 

I mentioned tarot above because that’s where I’m seeing tons of AI pop up. There are so many new decks. And the backgrounds folks are creating are super stunning. But they’re too pretty, and only slightly varied, and they’re AI. And that makes me sad and now I know why. Because of that sentence, from The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. He nailed it,

The beauty of art is the humanity held within it.

Yes. So much yes! Art like the tarot backgrounds created in the computer are indeed beautiful, but they’re lacking humanity. The humanity is missing. Doesn’t the chaos of nature add some beauty to everything? If all the flowers were perfect we’d walk outdoors and wonder what the heck happened here? If the clouds were perfect dragon shapes floating overhead that would be cool but too weird. So these perfectly perfect backgrounds that are perfect really bother me.

Pre-history shows us that humans used to beautify everything. We’d make a vessel by hand and paint a bird on the side, or protection symbols around our doors or adorn our bodies to show our place in our community. I’m not giving up on art. Messy art, bad art, kid art, all art. Use your hands. Put your mark, your humanity on what you do. Be present while you’re making. Take the time to put your humanity back into your one and precious best creative life.