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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   31008 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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Will AI bring back beauty?

Looking at midjourney's top pieces of art I am struck by the beauty in them. They contain detail, high degrees of realism even when depicting surrealist themes. They tend to be symmetrical and often portray idealized versions of reality. AI art tends to portray archetypal depicitions of its motifs and often excludes blemmishes, dirt and grime.

Compare it with corporate memphis a primarily human generated art form that has gained significant traction in the public space in the past decade. This is the most expensive painting painted by a living woman.

Compare the buildings drawn by the AI with the best exterior of 2022 in Sweden according to architects.

AI gives people what it gets positive feedback from. It gives people what they want. People want visually stunning rather than the output of the art community.

That midjourney stuff is utter pabulum. It's only beautiful by the most shallow and insipid standards of beauty. The kind of "beauty" that would rank Thomas Kinkaide's paintings above Rembrandt's, because the former is bright and sparkly while the latter is brown and muddy. Or the kind of "beauty" that would consider N*SYNC's music superior to Bach's because the former's is free of dissonance and the later's is rife with it.

I don't particularly like the human art you linked either, but at least the artists are trying to do something interesting. We can do better than ugly modern art without resorting to saccharine crap and calling it beauty.

AI gives people what it gets positive feedback from. It gives people what they want.

Marvel movies and McDonalds chicken nuggets are examples of giving people what they want. Mass appeal produces boring hyperpalatability, not greatness.

OK, let me raise you this human-made art, which someone has happily vandalized (an intolerable abuse as far as Emmanuel Macron is concerned): https://twitter.com/karlitozero/status/1655510062335492098

Or we have the art of Cleon Peterson, which is (and I say this charitably) overtly ugly and malevolent. If you saw one of these on the wall of someone's house, you could have no doubt that they're a villain. He's not some no-name either, he somehow managed to get a mural under the Eiffel Tower: https://www.artsy.net/artist/cleon-peterson

There's nothing wrong with beauty. Innovation for its own sake is not a good thing. If midjourney and stablediffusion are shallow and insipid, then so much the worse for the oh-so-sophisticated works of highly-credentialed, prestigious artists like those. Since the traditional art authorities have so manifestly failed to uphold aesthetic standards, they should shut up and let AI take over.

OK, let me raise you this human-made art, which someone has happily vandalized (an intolerable abuse as far as Emmanuel Macron is concerned): https://twitter.com/karlitozero/status/1655510062335492098

I thought this one was weird at first, but I looked into it and found this:

In response to a petition by several voluntary organisations, the urgent applications judge of the Conseil d’État found today that the display of the painting “Fuck abstraction!" at the Palais de Tokyo, a venue dedicated to contemporary design, does not seriously and unlawfully harm the best interests of the child or the dignity of the human person. It found, firstly, that measures have been taken to deter access by minors and, secondly, that explanatory notices along the access path give the painting the meaning intended by Miriam Cahn, denouncing rape in Ukraine.

Voluntary organisations had appealed against the ruling of the urgent applications judge of the administrative court of Paris, who had dismissed their petition for an order to remove the painting “Fuck abstraction!” by the artist Miriam Cahn, displayed in the Palais de Tokyo, on the grounds that it depicted the rape of a child by an adult and could be seen by minors.

The Conseil d’État firstly observed that Palais de Tokyo had surrounded access to the painting with precautions intended to keep unaccompanied minors away from it and deter adults accompanied by minors. Two security guards are placed at the entrance and in the room and a mediator is always present near the painting.

The hearing and exhibits also demonstrated that the artist's only intention was to denounce a crime. The judge pointed out that information labels were placed along the path leading to the work. This contextual information gives the work the meaning intended by Miriam Cahn. The sign placed in the centre of the room indicates that the painting was made after the broadcasting of images of the massacre in Bucha in Ukraine. The sign placed next to the painting refers to the crimes committed in Bucha, denounced as war crimes, and specifies that the victim is an adult.

In view of the above, the urgent applications judge found that the display of the painting, in a venue dedicated to contemporary design and known as such, and accompanied by detailed contextual information, does not seriously or clearly unlawfully harm the best interests of the child or the dignity of the human person.

That is, the painting is meant to criticize wartime rape and other war crimes. It doesn't celebrate its subject matter, and it's not meant to be beautiful. This isn't clear without context, but context was provided in the gallery where it was exhibited, and the only place you can find it without context is on the internet where people are deliberately omitting it to stir outrage.

I don't think it's a particularly great or novel artwork, but neither is it celebrating "pedocriminality" (the French sure do have a way with words). The style is kind of ugly, but if it were more realistic, it would be much closer to actual pornography.

Or we have the art of Cleon Peterson, which is (and I say this charitably) overtly ugly and malevolent. If you saw one of these on the wall of someone's house, you could have no doubt that they're a villain. He's not some no-name either, he somehow managed to get a mural under the Eiffel Tower: https://www.artsy.net/artist/cleon-peterson

I didn't even have to research this, the message is clear from the images. Those that portray police beating people are obviously meant to denounce police brutality, and this one which is literally titled "Genocide" isn't very subtle, either.

Compare Picasso's Guernica and Massacre in Korea. If you saw them in someone's house, without knowing anything about them before, they would certainly seem bizarre and creepy.

Between Cleon Peterson and Fuck abstraction, it seems you have a problem with art that has a message and isn't just meant to be pretty. I don't think every artwork must have social change as a goal; I don't think art should necessarily be, as the quote goes, "not a mirror to hold up to society but a hammer with which to shape it". But there is a place for such art, just as there is a place for art that is only meant to be beautiful without having any deeper meaning.

Again, I'm not a fan of Peterson. I wouldn't buy anything from him or go to an exhibition of his works. He apparently has hundreds of works with the same theme. Boring. And this one is like a Ben Garrison cartoon. But complaining that his works are "overtly ugly and malevolent" is missing the point.

This is the thing that Prima's reply above made me think about: the elites have obligations towards their supposed lessers, and they can't seem to fulfill this in the arena of art. Elites who fail to justify their status tend to get torn down by the hoi-polloi, even if to the short-term or long-term detriment of all.

I suppose many of these artists should be thankful that the system they work in isn't quite so Darwinian in that corporate manner, because they'd otherwise have eventually been thrown to the streets the moment something slightly more beautiful (and profitable) came along. That said, if crass sexual imagery and crudity is all they will approve of and circulate in institutions, then why don't we just throw out all these ugliness-factories and give their comfy stipends and sinecures to Japanese hentai artists? Their stuff at least looks nicer even when there's pubes, extreme orifice distension, and that ungodly vacuum horseface fellatio going on.

I'd rather have bimbos getting gangbanged in art vs whatever the hell Cleon Peterson is smoking. At least the crass sexual stuff doesn't hate my guts.

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