AI vs. ART

[Bartc]

You can't knock Bob Ross for opening painting as an experience for so many people. That his artwork wasn't of the highest caliber (ahem...) may indeed be not just the future of art but it's history.

Artwork available to the masses has been around for a loooonnnnnggggg time. Even without arguing about graffiti as art (and lord knows it has now become expensive "high art"), the printing processes have been distributing pictures for centuries. Some good, some crap, some revolutionary and influential. From Marimekko prints to comics to just about everything people hang on their walls or put on their beds or tables, mass produced designs have been our norm. Which says nothing about their merits as sophisticated works. They're just there and they ain't goin' away!

So AI works that we painters might deem naïve (not naif), sketchy, corny, derivative - substitute your own derogatory words here - are very likely to proliferate. And when they do, Bob Ross will be seen as a visionary. I still wouldn't hang anything he painted, however.... LOL

As to watching a live artist create, well, isn't that already a "happening" thing? When my painting group is out en plein air we get lots of viewers. Folks who think even our initial strokes are "beautiful" and want to snap a photo of us doing it. Not the same as their forking over some cash, but well, take what you can get until the machines take that over.

 

[Artyczar]

Last summer I showed in a 2-person show with a psychedelic artist that did "live" painting at the opening. Apparently, he does these events all the time and is very popular. He manages to get large canvases done in a couple of hours (2-3). He's quite prolific and the work is rendered well, but it's not something I would ever hang on my walls or anything. Not the same thing as plein air, of course, but people love to watch him. I'm not sure if people like the work, but I think people just like to see painters paint. It's a good way to learn as well, no matter what style someone is creating in.

By the way, I never watched Bob Ross when I was trying to learn how to paint, but I sure wish I did back in the day. I think I would have learned a lot from him. Once I knew about him, I really loved him and his calming effects and love for the process. I can see why he got so many people painting. I agree he was a kind of visionary. I saw that semi-recent documentary about him and it pained me to learn that he was screwed out of all the creative control and proceeds of the whole endeavor he championed. It's really too bad. To me, it's yet another sad story about an artist getting the bad end of the stick.

When I was in my 30s, however, I did discover Sister Wendy on PBS, which is what got me more interested in learning Art History. I was naive as hell about it, especially anything before the turn of the century (the century before this one, that is). I think the first one I saw was about Tatian, who I never knew of. I guess I lived under a rock. I knew about Botticelli and Michelangelo, but not much else of the Renaissance. I'd seen a show in Italy of Botticelli in Florance quite by accident, which I was in awe in. I will always consider that stuff "high art."

All this has nothing to do with Ai, so I'm sorry to go off topic!

 

[Bartc]

Ayin, I never took to Sister Wendy, but I did get in one art history course in college (from a nasty old fart professor who never should have been given the job), and the rest has been self-taught. Thank God for books, libraries and museums!

As young kid in the early days of TV I remember sitting with my cousin and drawing along with some guy on the tube. My son as a young kid became fascinated with a film of Picasso painting. Watching a live human create is something that many people are drawn to. And recently that fad of wine events with paint by quick instruction seems to have captured the same impulse. Do you remember "paint by numbers"?

As a kid I watched my uncle do some terrific oils by instruction from those dollar art instruction magazines they used to sell with a new painting weekly. I had the advantage of several hobby artists in my family, though I never followed along with them at the time nor did I take the art instruction on weekends some of my siblings and cousins did. At least we had a couple of semesters of art in high school in those days and we had a very simpatico and good instructor.

Today I get a kick out of YT vids of "Fake or Fortune" and some of the documentaries about forgers. Then the endless hours - particularly during the worst of Covid - watching demos on YouTube from some very good artists: Marla Bagetta, Bethany Fields, Karen Margulis, and so on.

I've done a couple of live demos myself.

Sometimes I imagine what it would have been like 50,000 years ago deep in a cold cave, watching someone paint by torchlight with ground pigments mixed in animal fat. Magic indeed!

Before I started painting, in my early twenties I was one of those "drifters" who traveled in Europe and Africa in a VW bus. In a campground an older guy I had befriended was an artist. I watched him one day (he was stoned on acid) paint a Goya-esque scene on his VW in acrylics. His hand swirled and it seemed like magic that faces appeared. It inspired me to consider painting.

When we paint in public children are especially excited and appreciative. They're amazed that someone can do that and they love everything. I wonder if they will have that same wonder in the age when AI takes over mass art.

 

[Artyczar]

Yes, thank goodness for libraries and museums! If I hadn't walked into those, I would have not been a painter. I lived at the public library from the age of 13. I was supposed to be in Jr. high school, but I'd spend a lot of my days there instead. The local librarian had mercy on me because I was still learning to read. She was helping me to try to "catch up" and knew how embarrassed I was. I never fully caught up, but became an avid reader, nonetheless. I'm just very slow and can't read aloud without annoying people.

And if I hadn't stepped foot in a museum at 16, I'd never be a "serious" artist, in love with expressionism. In love with Paul Klee, van Gogh, etc. There are no artists of any kind in my family. I was not exposed to art and have no idea why I was drawn to it. I just was. It had something to do with some posters I saw in a doctor's office waiting room when I was five or six, waiting for my mom. It was an abstract artist named Paul Jenkins and I was intrigued. It made me want to (possibly) make art when I "grew up." But I never did (grow up).

I know about paint-by-numbers, but never did those or knew anyone who did them growing up. The closest thing I had was a needlepoint of a turtle. Or maybe it was a ladybug. I never finished it because I stole it from a K-Mart when I was six (my brother made me do it) and I felt guilty about it keeping it, so I threw it out.

Yes, can you imagine making your own pigments? A far cry from Ai! When I started painting, I worked in egg tempera. That's the closest I ever came to that.

You know, I have never taken advantage of YT tutorials. I bet I could learn something! I think it's awesome how younger artists get to grow up with that. No expensive art school needed really. I mean, except for the community. I would have liked that aspect.

I like to imagine you as a young drifter backpacking all over the continents. I bet that was cool. Only in our youth, right?

 

[Bartc]

Yeah, and I'd love to have the freedom of youth, though now I would prefer some creature comforts. Living in winter cold and Sahara summer heat in a tin can would not fit my current needs. But the lure of just going with your heart or the weather to paint wherever with no deadlines and no return reservations certainly still has appeal. Though I was an avid backpacker, I didn't do the backpack routine, however, just the VW Bus campgrounds routine, and that was quite a learning experience.

I did get to visit cave art, many megalithic structures with incised art, small and large museums and galleries. What an extraordinary experience!

And I bought my girlfriend an acrylic painting set I thought she would use, but she didn't. Had I known then what I learned years later, I would have grabbed it for myself.

In those days my art form was photography (and my business later.) I recall one slide I took of a 6,000 year old megalith in Carnac France at night with a crescent moon lighting the sky behind it. Title for me was "Beneath the Lighted Shapes of Faith", a line from a favorite Dylan Thomas poem. If you saw that photo today (can't find it, sorry), you would think it much like the AI sci-fi stuff out there. How ironic.

I have always disdained the kitschy art of that painter/entrepreneur Thomas Kinkade (YMMV on taste of course.) 14 years ago I was on a painting trip through France and Italy by train and bike. One morning I was cycling down the Alpilles from Les Baux. There were trees and fields with little wildflowers peeking out with stone houses occasionally. Something about the lighting (overcast) was very special and spectral. All of a sudden I said to myself, "Holy effing shit, I'm biking in a Kinkade!"

So you never do know about what's "real" or not, as the real world dishes up some extraordinary sights.

 

[16ga]

No, William Alexander was. ...

That is oddly more acceptable to me.

 

[Bartc]

That is oddly more acceptable to me.

Never got into him. Don't seem to have missed much.

 

[16ga]

Never got into him. Don't seem to have missed much.

Honestly I feel Bill was the better artist of the 2.
Bob was just more charismatic and had a better personality.

 

[Enyaw]

William was the original magic white artist and Bob was his student. William seemed to me like he was plastered all the time. He was actually funny. I didn't paint but I watched his show. Thought it was brilliant how so little could make you envision a real landscape. Of course when you are a kid everything is magnified. I would not watch today but that is childhood and though the quality was mostly imagination it was inspirational and entertaining.

 

[Marc]

"If you can't stand up. Just lean against the wall Bill. That's plastered as well."

 

[Dynamic Pencil]

William was the original magic white artist and Bob was his student. William seemed to me like he was plastered all the time. He was actually funny. I didn't paint but I watched his show. Thought it was brilliant how so little could make you envision a real landscape. Of course when you are a kid everything is magnified. I would not watch today but that is childhood and though the quality was mostly imagination it was inspirational and entertaining.

I used to watch William (Bill) Alexander on Saturdays with my grandmother and was amazed at what he could do. For whatever reason, PBS pushed Bill aside in favor of Bob Ross. There was even an old PBS promo showing Bill hand his brush over to Bob Ross to pass the torch, as it were. The CreateTV network shows repeats of Bob Ross today, and has a promo calling him the originator of all the painting shows. It is a shame (and disrespectful) how little credit is given to William Alexander, because he was the one who started with The Magic of Oil Painting in 1974.

 

[Bongo]

Bart
"I have always disdained the kitschy art of that painter/entrepreneur Thomas Kinkade (YMMV on taste of course.) "

Somethings you may not know about Kincade.

Kinkade and Jame Gurney were college roommates. After college they road the rails together sketching along the way.
Gurney went into illustration, Kinkade went into animation.

Kinkade was an enthusiastic and very good Plein Air painter. There are some You Tube videos of him doing Plein AIR
Kinkade was actually a very good painter, masterful and innovative about how he went about painting. Enthusiastic and open with his studio and techniques. There is some of this online and you will be impressed by the guy. And you can see this on Youtube,

But as he became more popular and richer he turned to projectors, ..painted giclees, computers, and assistants to crank out what had been his solitary, dedicated, honest approach.

His work became especially attractive to Religious folk, and he IMO took unscrupulous advantage of their devotion and nativity about art. With galleries in shopping malls, and his infamous "highlighting" parties.

He also became a fall-down drunk in public, obnoxious, potty mouth, who once peed on WInnie the Poo at Disneyland.

I just found this fantastic article on this twisted soul, that can say much more and better than I can - highly recommended,

Thomas Kinkade, “Painter of Light™,” Once Peed on Winnie the Pooh

“Wholesome Christian values” apparently meant driving drunk, fondling women, and fleecing investors.

medium.com

 

[Bartc]

Bongo, didn't know about his stuff before the mass produced kitsch, and as I said, taste is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Marc]

I just found this fantastic article on this twisted soul, that can say much more and better than I can - highly recommended,

Thomas Kinkade, “Painter of Light™,” Once Peed on Winnie the Pooh

“Wholesome Christian values” apparently meant driving drunk, fondling women, and fleecing investors.

medium.com

I didn't find it fantastic, but rather poisonous. Why on earth did the writer bring race into it? The whole piece is kicking a dead horse. A rather sad dead horse at that, who became an alcoholic to calm the pain of selling his soul to Mammon. I don't think I'd want to know the author.

 

[Bongo]

yeah, the writer did jump the shark a few times - as far as I know, Kinkade wasn't a racist - there are enough noxious things to say about him without piling that on. I thought the writer went overboard denigrating his admirers too,, but other than that
so I take back my "highly recommended"

 

[joe1It]

Bongo mentioned Jame Gurney above, speaking of artificial intelligence it occurred to me that a couple of days ago I read a post of his on instagram in which he says that he has trained AI to respond in his own way, by Jame Gurney to the questions he receives about art.

 

[joe1It]

last things and other things.

I like the color but that is only my choice. Nice work on a lot of these.

creativespark.art

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AI don't dream of electric sheep, or do they?

 

[Bartc]

So now even a misguided attempt by an artist to stimulate discussion backfires due to AI...... At least he did the right thing in the end.

Artist wins Sony World Photography contest, declines award because image was AI-generated

The artist, Boris Eldagsen, said AI images should not count as photography nor should they be judged in the same competitions.

www.usatoday.com

 

[john]

I don't know if this has been mentioned yet but with AI you can take your own paintings etc and input it into the AI program and then it makes "art" based on your own. I would like to try that. At least one gallery artist has done this.

 

[Marc]

I don't know if this has been mentioned yet but with AI you can take your own paintings etc and input it into the AI program and then it makes "art" based on your own. I would like to try that. At least one gallery artist has done this.

I'd be curious to try that. Though presently I have too many ideas to create and not enough time to paint them all without adding AI variations as well.