The idea that art can be made by a computer puts an element of what we consider fundamentally human into crisis. What is it about AI-generated art that is so threatening? Why has it created such a chaotic collective identity crisis?
The question of an artist’s latent identity in their work is explored in Kurt Vonnegut’s Bluebeard, a novel which follows fictional abstract expressionist painter Rabo Karabekian. In his youth, Karabekian apprentices under a legendary photorealistic artist, but eventually becomes disenchanted with the genre’s reduction of art to “counterfeits” and “taxidermy.” Rabo subsequently makes his name in abstract expressionism, a movement his friend Slazinger questions in this dialogue:
“Tell me, Rabo — said Slazinger, if I put on that same paint with that same roller, would the picture still be a Karabekian?
Absolutely, I said, provided you have in reserve what Karabekian has in reserve.
Like what? he said.
Like this, I said. There was dust in a pothole in the floor, and I picked up some of it on the balls of both my thumbs. Working both thumbs simultaneously, I sketched a caricature of Slazinger’s face on the canvas in thirty seconds.
Jesus! he said. I had no idea you could draw like that!
You’re looking at a man who has options, I said.
And he said: I guess you do, I guess you do.”
The hallmark of abstract expressionism is, “Hey, I could do that!” But this scene highlights that the legitimacy of Karabekian’s artwork—and abstract expressionism—comes from what the artist could do, but doesn’t. The artwork is valued precisely for what is absent from the canvas.
This is why abstract expressionism was so disruptive for galleries, which evaluate art based on that which can be perceived: the arrangement or properties of paint on a canvas. In fact, abstract expressionism was only revolutionary because the context of its presentation (the gallery) sought to derive, from pieces’ immediate physical qualities, a method of evaluation between them. Abstract expressionism was an acute contestation of the possibility of that common denominator, or any sense of objectivity in artwork. It was successful in returning our attention to that which is present in, but not a property of, the canvas: the identity of the artist.
Abstract expressionism reincorporated the artist into the frame by making art which could be “done by anyone,” and so had to be evaluated in relation to its creator. The mechanism through which artificial intelligence has generated chaos is similar. By making the production of an artistic style or prestige available “to anyone,” AI forces us to confront the critical but unknowable presence of an artist’s identity, psyche, and “creative process” in the final piece. Of course, abstract expressionism’s recontextualization of the artist relied on it being “counter-”, so the crisis that unraveled was attenuated by its very flourishing. We are now in a second renaissance of the artist’s latent identity, a panic and fixation generated by artist-less art.
To see how the gallery structures our relation to artwork, let’s take a counterpoint: the mural. A typical mural begins with a process of interaction with the community, including forums, interviews, or historical research. If it’s a public project, the artist will probably meet with the city council, or convene community members to brainstorm qualities and images that resonate with their identity. While the muralist is painting, passerby will see its progress each day and may stop to talk to the muralist, ask questions, or even give input. In its final form, a mural seeks to bring out themes that emerged during the social processes leading up to it. The mural does not attempt to obscure any aspect of its creation, and is enjoyable because it visibilizes the process through which it was conceived and executed.
In contrast, the gallery seeks a baseline of comparability between works by divorcing them from the conditions of their creation. This observer-artwork relation is sustained by the imposition of the frame, which collapses the piece to a finished collection of brushstrokes. The context of the work may be elaborated on a plaque to the side, but the walls of the frame posit a complete, standalone entity. The frame embalms and equalizes, allowing works to be evaluated from within its limits: that which can be observed, perceived, and intuited. In this reduction of artwork to its immediate and knowable qualities, the frame opens the possibility for complete knowledge of a piece.
In smoothing out appearances, however, the frame also conceals. Namely, in positing total knowability, the frame obscures the real but indeterminable influence of the artist’s unconscious in the end product. The frame does not reject the presence of the unconscious in the work; rather, it asserts that this fact in no way impedes your ability to comprehend the final product in its entirety. The isolation of artwork within the bounds of the frame disavows the radical subjectivity of its creation, providing the observer a sense of mastery over the work.
The gallery, as a mode of relation, is a space in which the observer passes from pedestrian to critic through conceptual domination of the artwork. This relation becomes possible at the moment the frame is imposed on the work; at the moment it becomes collapsed, complete, eternal.
AI art has optimized the gallery’s sterilizing function ad absurdum, producing a buffet of complex and often wonderful pictures completely devoid of any artistic indeterminacy that the frame works to expel. Here, however, arises a fascinating paradox: a machine which continually generates end-products with no artist should be the perfect complement to a space which seeks to evict the artist from each end product. Why, then, do galleries not jump with joy for AI art?
To understand why AI art threatens the gallery model, we must understand that galleries do not merely, through the mechanism of the frame, attempt to evict the artist from their own work. In fact, the observer, artist, and curator know perfectly well that this is impossible! Instead, the gallery demands that we behave as if the art within the frame were an entity in itself, and that what we perceive is the work in its entirety. Pretending that the presence of the artist’s unconscious within the frame doesn’t impede your own perception of the final product is the basis for enjoyment in the gallery.
Think of an art critic who savors his air of superiority as he strolls through a gallery. He strokes his chin, and, smiling to himself, asks what you think of a piece. This interaction, especially his enjoyment of your naivete, is upheld by the notion that the critic exerts mastery over the frame in question; that he has a private, comprehensive knowledge of the work. The addition from psychoanalysis is that the critic’s mildly sadistic enjoyment arises not despite but because of the fact that everyone knows that the artwork retains a transcendent quality that even he cannot grasp: the artist’s identity; her inspiration; her mind at the moment of creation. The social function of the gallery is to cover up this gap in knowledge, to allow any observer to gaze upon the artwork with total command and thus be elevated to critic. The artwork is exposed, crucified, laid bare by the frame, at the same time that it is sublimated and given a sense of completeness. It is, furthermore, the failure of the frame’s eviction of the artist that creates enjoyment, since the work’s divine, indeterminable elements are maintained.
Since AI art does not have any identifiable artist, it spoils this fantasy of knowing the unknowable. AI products are outputs; canvas-deep, and contain no manifestation of the unconscious over which the critic can play master. If enjoyment in a gallery is the process of mastering “the behind” of a painting, AI forecloses this enjoyment by declaring: there is no behind. If I may express the gallery relation with some arithmetic:
(gallery) enjoyment = art – artist(‘s unconscious)
In this equation, it’s not actually “pure art” we desire, but the subtraction sign itself. This is clear from the gallery and critic’s collective disdain for art from which the artist (and therefore the subtraction sign) are successfully evicted once and for all.
To be sure, AI art is not permanently at odds with galleries, for the same reason that abstract art is now exceedingly common in them. Indeed, we can imagine that in a short time, galleries may begin printing and displaying AI art (if they aren’t already!). The point is that the growing mass of apparently artist-less work, each day more intricate and less distinguishable from things made by humans, threatens a certain way of relating to art. And when we look at why it’s a threat, both to galleries and our own human identity, we can better understand the social, psychological, and spatial mediation of our enjoyment of art.
I believe that if contextual isolation of art were not a key tenet of the way galleries structure enjoyment, the flooding of the market with “artist-less art” would not be able generate the alarm that it has. In this sense, computer-generated art has also opened the possibility for an epistemic break: we are being confronted with the immovable, incalculable presence of latent identity in human artwork and must find a new way to relate to it.
The collective crisis felt by AI art is revealing of the extent to which the gallery is our dominant way of relating to artwork, whether in a literal gallery, online (quick boomer remark: Instagram is the obligatory imposition of the frame over our own lives, no?), or other instances of vacuum-sealing ourselves and most intimate creations to draw comparisons until the next abstract expressionist or computer-art-generator reminds us that radical subjectivity is both the source and undermining of art, and she doesn’t play well with common denominators. Fortunately, art is quite resilient against its reduction to a collection of pixels or brushstrokes. Did the fact that a 10-year old could have made a Jackson Pollock undermine his credibility as an artist? A lot of people would certainly say so. Nevertheless, the relevance of Pollock today is how he managed to call attention to the discrepancy between the physical characteristics of a work, its creator, and the social evaluation of it. He hammered a wedge into the collective unconscious, revealing the vast space where identity is, and has always been, constructed: outside the frame.
This blog was originally mailed on April 12, 2024