In 1434, the high-tech medium of oil paint allowed the Flemish master Jan van Eyck to create his luxurious double portrait of Arnolfinis of astonishing depth. He couldn’t help but show off a little more. A convex mirror on the far wall contains a small self-portrait of the painter at work.
Six centuries later, multimedia artist and writer Seth Price “Thought Comes from the Body II” contains a fantastical mirror-like sphere in the upper left, with a large cracked black and dayglo painting on the panel, but still shows virtuosity . In the reflection, we can see her two figures (one of whom might be Price) crouching over the painting on the studio floor.
Van Eyck had to create this illusion by hand. I used the app for the price. his latest painting Petzel of Chelsea Until June 3rd, we’ll be highlighting issues that are easily overlooked. Why would today’s tech-savvy artists use advanced software, including AI, to evoke the past?
A New York conceptual artist collected at MoMA and Whitney, Price has embraced the production and distribution of contemporary art as a subject for 20 years, beginning with her 2002 essay artwork. “dispersed’ Much like suspending pigments in oil or coating glass with photosensitive silver salts, Price’s 2020 and beyond paintings use abstract dashes and spouts in ominous portraiture, mass text, combined with a background resembling a notebook or sketchbook page. Adding a trompe l’oeil chrome tube and a mirror It seems to pierce through their surface. To render these perfectly distorted reflections, Price took photographs of the paintings, added shiny objects with his 3D modeling software, and matched their shapes to physical panels with an industrial printer. increase.
Five of his 11 paintings on display at Petzel incorporate AI-generated imagery, most of which are buried in abstract spills and smudges. But some tell. The unsettled anatomy and craggy physics of Price’s “Weken Style,” an understated black-and-white diptych of a studio table littered with groups of contorted figures and dreamy tools, hint at the work of machines. I’m here. Image generation AI called DALL-E. In fact, Price used his AI to conjure up a painting, printing it “wet” onto plastic and inking it with his finger to add a uniquely human touch. (Many of Price’s latest paintings feature another symbol of the artist’s hand: the brush his strokes. Roy Lichtenstein To Laura Owens Use it to show that although the techniques and ideas have changed, their work is still art. )
Evidence of AI in “Danlivin” stands out from the painting’s rings and splashes. Nonsensical phrase “THE TNETES 19989”, 9 in different fonts. This is the characteristic garbled dictionary of his generator of images that imitate the appearance of words, but not necessarily their meanings.
The urge to use AI to indulge in nostalgia is palpable. This he was awarded by Boris Erdagsen at the Sony World Photography Awards open competition in March — Surprise! — was generated by AI. But it certainly looks like a vintage photo: a worn-out black-and-white photo of two women crouching mysteriously behind the other. There is also a glow in the corners. Eldagsen claims he entered the contest to stir up controversy (then declined the prestigious award), on the other hand, the judges happily argue that they chose to work on algorithms. (Something is clearly off. Like so many photoshop failures, the hands don’t match the torso. Human anatomy, like words, can be tricky for image-generating AI. .)
Ethics of truth in AI-generated media, especially politics and history in danger. Analogue photographers Herbert His Asherman and Shane Barkowicz tainted with prompt-generated anthropology-style photographs like “Lost in the 1800s, New He is a tin mold of Mexican tribes” It specifically points out how to effectively erase. historical record.
But worrying about the use of AI in contemporary art is like yelling at a machine loom. Beyond the fog of novelty, it’s worth asking what images artists want in their software, and why.
While Eldagsen is shaking up the traditional world of photography, Gagosian threw a show in New York’s Upper East Side outpost in March. Bennett Miller Known for directing films such as “Capote” and “Moneyball”. These photos are of his DALL-E descendants, but they are influencing the old photo fascination. Square sepia-toned images depict Victorian children, vanished Native American chiefs, Hollywood his type of “brave” tumbling off a cliff. A photo of a tiny white flower on a fingertip is speckled as if it had been printed from a dusty negative. It’s a flaw that any photographer can fix, but in the age of AI, it’s a sign of authenticity for counterfeiting.
The way these AI-generated images imitate “real photographs” is a reflection of the 19th-century academic art movement that protested that photographs taken by mechanical and chemical means were more scientific than artistic media. It’s an ironic throwback to establishment. Some photographers of the time reacted to “pictorialism”. This is a style that downplays technical precision and mimics painting by embellishing foggy depths, soft focus, and moody lighting.
The argument against AI-generated art sounds familiar. skill Get involved, you just pushed buttonSome AI image creators have also reacted by adopting romantic and retrograde styles, including the dark “past” of pictorialism.
There is nothing in Eldagsen’s or Miller’s fantasies that 10, 20, or 50-year-old maquette, models, or even trusty Photoshop couldn’t create.Certainly, I’m not good at making AI image processing programs new thing. By design, they can only play “exquisite corpses” with a vast collection of what is said to be faces, animals, or tin portraits.
Price does more than imagine another sepia-toned past. He embraces the nostalgic impulses of his AI as one of the cacophony of styles that define the present moment. In a strange mix of old and new, printer and hand, Price’s paintings embody the simultaneity that defines “modernity.” His paintings depict AI’s anxiety about what makes us human, but AI doesn’t give in.
Aldmancer
Through June 3, Petzel Gallery, 520 West 25th Street, Chelsea, (212) 680 9467. petzel.com.
