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Don't be mean. I promise to do my best to judge that fairly.
Fountain is unfathomably based. I've used this history lesson to reassure my cousin who started painting for his PTSD and got told by a bunch of shitheads that he wasn't a "Real Artist" when he sold some art.
This stuff is a litmus test for when you're in a culture war with people trying to hide the fact they're warring with you on every front they can
If he sold art he's definitely an artist.
If he hadn't sold any he would be too, but selling it is undsniable proof that someone else across him as an artist.
People were still assholes. I think they just wanted to hurt him because of their own internal problems and he appeared as an easy target
Only people who don't understand art say that people "aren't real artists." It's the most obvious way to know that someone's opinion isn't worth listening to.
You're only "not an artist" if you're not making art. If you make something and don't want it to be art, then it's not art, and you're not an artist.
That's about it as not artist goes.
That got me thinking;
a welder creating a sculpture: artist
a welder making a tool: artisan
Is the tool a functional piece of art?
Perhaps, I think I'm guilty of that too in this exact thread. The generative AI question is a focal point if such notions and it doesn't seem like there will ever be a consensus without at least some learned people asserting that something isn't art.
The same thing happened to photography, and other kinds of modern art, too. Things are often excluded from being art until they are included (to at least a subset of people).
With AI it is often questionable how much 'intent' someone has put into a work: 'wrote a simple trivial prompt, generated a few images, shared all of them' results in uninteresting slop, while 'spent a lot of time to make the AI generate exactly what you want, even coming up with weird ways to use the model (like this / non-archive link)' is a lot more interesting in my view.
The difference is photography can be art, but it isn't always. Photo composition and content are used to convey meaning. The photo is a tool under the artist's complete control. The photo is not art on its own. Just like if you accidentally spill paint on a canvas it isn't necessarily art, a photo taken without intent isn't necessarily art. If I accidentally hit the camera button on my phone that doesn't make me a photographer.
AI generated images can not do this. The user can give a prompt, but they don't actually have control over the tool. They can modify their prompt to get different outputs, but the tool is doing its own thing. The user just has to keep trying until they get an output they like, but it isn't done by their control. It's similar to a user always accidentally doing things, until they get what they want. If you record every moment of your life you're likely to have some frames that look good, but you aren't a photographer because you didn't intend to get that output.
The difference is photography can be art, but it isn't always. Photo composition and content are used to convey meaning. The photo is a tool under the artist's complete control. The photo is not art on its own. Just like if you accidentally spill paint on a canvas it isn't necessarily art, a photo taken without intent isn't necessarily art. If I accidentally hit the camera button on my phone that doesn't make me a photographer.
I don't completely agree. While an accident is one example where intent is missing, publishing accidental shots could be a form of art in its own way as the act of publishing itself has intent associated with it.
Furthermore, nature photography is in my view also art, but provides much less control than studio photography, as the scene and subject are free to do whatever they want.
AI generated images can not do this. The user can give a prompt, but they don't actually have control over the tool. They can modify their prompt to get different outputs, but the tool is doing its own thing. The user just has to keep trying until they get an output they like, but it isn't done by their control. It's similar to a user always accidentally doing things, until they get what they want. If you record every moment of your life you're likely to have some frames that look good, but you aren't a photographer because you didn't intend to get that output.
I don't think recording everything would make it less of an artpiece: you would have intentionally chosen to record continuously to capture that frame, and skimmed though those frames to find the right one. Like splattering paint on a canvas intentionally, you don't intend to control the full picture - where the paint ends up - but rather the conceptual idea of a splatter of paint, leaving the details, in part, up to physics.
There are limits to what repeatedly prompting an AI model can do, but that doesn't stop you from doing other things with the output, or toying with how it functions or how it is used, as my example shows.
While I wouldn't discount something if it was created using AI, I need there to be something for me to interact with or think about in a piece of art. As the creation of an image is effectively done by probability, anything missing in the prompt will in all likelihood be filled with a probabilistically plausible answer, which makes the output rather boring and uninteresting. This doesn't mean that AI cannot be used to create art, but it does mean you need to put in some effort to make it so.
That's the beauty of art. It spawns discussion and it can't be nailed down to any singular definition. You and the person you responded to are completely correct
I think with ai art though the issue is not the user's ability to tweak the prompts but more the fact that anything generated from an AI is stolen work
If there was a way to train your own ai (llm, genai) off of your own creations or the works of others with their explicit consent then I'd consider that art. But the biggest issue right now is many of these ais are using stolen work across the board to generate their images, regardless of how much time and care goes into crafting the perfect prompt
I don't completely agree. While an accident is one example where intent is missing, publishing accidental shots could be a form of art in its own way as the act of publishing itself has intent associated with it.
Yeah, find interesting accidental photos that tell a story would be a creative work of art. The photos wouldn't be before, but putting them together could be.
Furthermore, nature photography is in my view also art, but provides much less control than studio photography, as the scene and subject are free to do whatever they want.
Like I said, composition and subject are important. That doesn't mean you stage them. It means make something interesting out of the scene.
I don't think recording everything would make it less of an artpiece: you would have intentionally chosen to record continuously to capture that frame, and skimmed though those frames to find the right one.
Yeah, the act of choosing a frame could be artistic. That's not what I meant. I meant an amazing image could exist within the frames. It isn't art just because it's there. Sure, something could be done with it to make it art. Like you imply, intention is the important part. You're agreeing, but you're adding intention to all the examples I'm giving. Without the intention I assume you agree that they aren't art.
There are limits to what repeatedly prompting an AI model can do, but that doesn't stop you from doing other things with the output...
Sure, you can do things with the output. I've proposed the idea of making a piece about the soulessness of AI generated images, and making a collage of AI generated images next to artist created ones, to show how it's missing the creative spark a human can add. This would be taking AI generated images and making art out of them. They wouldn't be art right out of the model though.
I mean the toilet is quite obviously art, you can understand exactly what the artist was expressing. AI art literally isn't art because it lacks any expression or meaning.
Evidence? Show me an expressive piece of AI "art". There is none.
i'ma change my mind about it when those damn scrapers stop to think
They say “traditional art”, but they mean “shut up and paint, with no subversive messages hidden”.
But the thing is, the time period they consider “traditional art” is chock full of artists being told to “shut up and paint”, and not appreciating that very much and deciding to sneak subversive messages into their works, knowing that their patrons would be too dumb to catch on.
In effect, they’re saying “can we go back to a time when I didn’t understand that you thought I was dumb?”
Shall we talk about Caravaggio? Most notably Basket of fruit?
He was an atheist sneaking anti-church messages in his church-bought paintings. Iirc he got found out a couple of times and people weren’t super happy if being played for fools.
I had to look it up; what a beautiful painting!
From the outset it looks quite normal and enticing but on further examination:
Sorry for the wall of text but I found this fascinating, also serves a great alt text (which I don't know how to add with my client) or for a screen reader
... a good-sized, light-red peach attached to a stem with wormholes in the leaf resembling damage by oriental fruit moth (Orthosia hibisci). Beneath it is a single bicolored apple, shown from a stem perspective with two insect entry holes, probably codling moth, one of which shows secondary rot at the edge; one blushed yellow pear with insect predations resembling damage by leaf roller (Archips argyospita); four figs, two white and two purple—the purple ones dead ripe and splitting along the sides, plus a large fig leaf with a prominent fungal scorch lesion resembling anthracnose (Glomerella cingulata); and a single unblemished quince with a leafy spur showing fungal spots. There are four clusters of grapes, black, red, golden, and white; the red cluster on the right shows several mummied fruit, while the two clusters on the left each show an overripe berry. There are two grape leaves, one severely desiccated and shriveled while the other contains spots and evidence of an egg mass. In the right part of the basket are two green figs and a ripe black one is nestled in the rear on the left. On the sides of the basket are two disembodied shoots: to the right is a grape shoot with two leaves, both showing severe insect predations resembling grasshopper feeding; to the left is a floating spur of quince or pear.
For the symbology (of which I remember only parts)
The apple is a symbol of Christ, so have a worm hole undercuts Christ himself.
The wine grapes are symbol of the resurrection, but they are sick.
The figs… maybe you can guess? Another Christian symbol, looking sickly and overshadowed.
The basket itself is a symbol of the plenty that God bestowed mankind, and is overhanging the side of the table, ready to fall.
This painting metaphorically says “there is no god, and definitely no Christian God”
Thanks for posting the picture, I still haven’t figured out how to do it!
I was one of those people who derided “Fountain,” until about thirty seconds ago. Thank you for this.
Conversely, I was one of those people who were thrilled by "Fountain" from the second they first heard about it. Thank you for this.
👌😁
I didn't care about fountain and now I still don't. But the discussion was engaging, so I kept reading.
I don't think he's a genius, maybe he was just having fun and doing inside jokes to himself while creating all of this. Art can bring out emotions, one of which is laughter. Who knows besides himself?
I had a great teacher that did a wonderful job of contextualising it so loved it when I first was told the story.
It's worth taking a dip into the history books to get a better sense of art culture at the time. It doesn't ring of genius without it but when you realise just how audacious and tangential to the norm it was chefs kiss. Beautiful.
People who hate on modern art are either too stupid to understand it or afraid of it.
Like you don't have to like or love it, but imagine saying it's not art...
The thing that i happily hate on is the art world's reverence for it. Half the time modern art pieces are mocking that specifically.
It's like someone says something is only profitable because it's unethical then the other person does it because they heard it's profitable. Often quite literally wrt modern art.
Anyways, these urinals would be much funnier if they were installed in the restrooms splashing half the patron's piss back on them.
remember kids, it doesn't need to be difficult to make to be art, it just needs to make you think of it as art
Gonna be honest: Gatekeeping what should be defined as art ist kinda stupid. Art even includes discussion about what art is. Art is just a visual (or audiotory) effigy of big parts of philosophy. If a piece inspires you to have deep philosophical discussion about what art is, it is art simply by forcing you to think.
At first I thought this tradpost was pro pissing on feet instead of in urinals
Great post and very good art.
I agree that the scooper is too flimsy, but I’ve used a lot of shovels with square handles, what’s the problem there?
what the fuck is fountain
That urinal most of the post is about
Please do pee on the art, it would be a very funny news story
The urinal is not art. The reaction to the urinal is art on a mastercraft level. No one has quite reached the same level of artistry since. You can duct tape a banana to a wall, but it just doesn't create the same outrage as the urinal did.
Did we read the same series of posts? I thought they made it very clear that the urinal is art and explained how the reaction was desired and how the artist tried to create that reaction?
