my issue with the argument that "disliking ai art is inherently reactionary" is that it acts like pro-ai art people are somehow less reactionary on their views on art, when like the majority of defense's of ai art as like a higher form art are indistinguishable from the arguments people use to defend the art of like. hitler
like the logic is that hitler was actually a great artist, entirely hinges on the belief that "objectively good art" is just art that looks detailed if you've never drawn before, which like why ai artists who want to prove their actual artists will just make a pretty looking building or lady, cause it's all about aesthetics i guess
like i'm not saying your a nazi if you like ai art, i just think it's silly when people act like anti-ai artist's are just hysterical luddites, and that ai artists are the ONLY people who actually care about art, when 99 percent of ai artists on twitter only care about art that's "beautiful" on an extremely superficial level.
Jacob Geller dissected the intersection of Fascism and modern art in 2020, sadly before the AI art boom, and goes into better detail than I can about how abstraction is a threat to fascist ideals. I also want to draw attention to possibly my favorite commentary on modernism.
Comic by Ad Reinhardt, an abstract painter, who's made multiple comics about art and perception.
AI slop only bring repetition and lack of original idea to the table. it's an advanced form of stolen art collage. It seeks only to trace and multiply without provoking. It's the anthesis of art.
The way I explained it to my young cousin was like this:
Back before cameras, paintings were just recording reality, and that's why painters tried to be as realistic as they could, and only paint things that could exist in the world around them--objects, and people, and animals. Sometimes they did paint things from their imagination, but only to illustrate stories, like stories from their religion.
Then, cameras came along, and painters were free to paint things cameras couldn't see--things like the artist's feelings, or ideas, or thoughts, or lots of things. Some artists tried to see if they could paint from every angle at once, and we call that Cubism. Some artists tried to paint very quickly, as quickly as they could, so they could capture one single moment of the daylight, or their impression of a moment, with all the feelings light gives, and that's why we call them Impressionists. Some artists were more interested in the process of painting, like Mr Rothko; or in finding the most intense versions of a colour, like Mr Klein. Some were more interested in the spaces between things, like Mr Mondrian. But art, after cameras, could suddenly SAY something, say something by itself! And art, as it turns out, has a lot to say!
"I can do that too! I can do that!" You can, little friend! We all can!
My little cousin didn't get mad looking at modern art; she was excited, and asked her parents if she could have fancy grown-up paints, because she didn't know Art could be something she could do, could be something about expressing her feelings and ideas. This is a child who can't yet write very well, and not nearly as fast or as well as she speaks, so you have to understand something clicked for her, that she could express the complex human things inside herself with colour and shapes and images, instead of struggling to learn how to spell "melancholy" or "excited" or conjugate verbs to a degree that could encompass it.
Because words take TIME to master as an art form--I should know, I've been practising using them to express MY ideas and feelings artistically for 36-and-a-half years! Paint, however, doesn't require such mastery in order to begin expressing the artist; certainly it helps to know skills, but it isn't as required as it is with words. You can just scream and yell with paint, you can experiment more purely with images than with sounds, which after all are regimented into languages before we can begin to use them at all, let alone for the art words make.
And honestly, why are whole-ass adults not understanding that "I could make that!" should be exciting, should inspire you to go and make that! Why are you so mad? "I could make that!" Yes you can! And you get to! And you're an adult, you don't have to ask your parents to buy you paint and canvas and brushes, you can go and do that yourself and be expressing your own feelings this very afternoon! Nothing is stopping you! You don't NEED that plagiarism machine, you can do better art yourself! And nobody else in the whole world, now or in the past or in the future, is EVER going to be able to make the art YOU can make, the art YOU have inside you! So go make it!
I took a lot of art classes all throughout high school, and my main art teacher in those years was really into observation drawing. In her classes, we each got a composition book with unlined pages, and had an ongoing assignment to make five observation drawings a week (such as: draw your coffee cup at breakfast, or that cool leaf you found on the sidewalk, etc.), so we're not only drawing/painting things from our imaginations.
She was a big fan of abstract art and sculpture, too.
And the goal was never to make a perfectly "realistic" image of whatever--it was to slow down our eyes & brain, and really pay attention to the world around us, instead of jumping to the conclusion that we already know what [X] looks like, and rush through it.
(The first assignment she gave in class every semester was to draw our own hand without looking at the paper, or lifting the pencil. If your line went off the paper, that was okay, as long as you slowed down, and paid attention to the wrinkles of your knuckles, and the creases in your skin. The analogy she gave that's stuck in my head was it's like driving a car: you don't drive and watch the steering wheel--you watch the road, your eyes follow the curves ahead, and your hands follow your eyes).
Once we got into the habit of actually paying attention to the little things in the world around us, our imaginations and abstract art got more meaningful to us, too.
The thing that I hate about gen. A.I. is that it's being sold as a way to bypass the whole process of personally engaging with the world, and that only the shiniest end product matters.
P.S.:
There is a ~Notion~ that's been percolating through my mind that the way generative A.I. "art" is sold: that taking the time to learn a skill is un-fun and a waste of time, is the reason it's so attractive to alt-right tech bros. It lets them pat themselves on the back for being 'galaxy brained' for not looking closely at the world around them (the whole system is built on jumping to conclusions, over and over again, and picking the 'prettiest' average).
Right along with Elon Musk saying empathy is a bug of Western civilization (Snopes.com fact check article).
My high school art teacher would be appalled.
