AI in the arts

 Computational creativity

There’s a long history of artists using principles, or algorithms, or chance to create works, especially in the visual arts.  Generative AI, working from a huge set of past images, texts, and/or scenarios, is just the latest.

·  automatism in art:   Joan Miró & André Masson (painting/drawing from the subconscious)  Jackson Pollack (pouring, dripping, and pushing paint very consciously, but with stochastic elements in the conduct of the paint)

·  algorithmic art:  generated by computers using artist-provided algorithms, with a stochastic element;  Vera Molnár, Dóra Maurer, Gizella Rákóczy

·  Generative AI using Deep Neural Networks, working from a huge set of past images

·  Generative Adversarial Networks, which create content and then assess them for verisimilitude [Gaskin 2018]

 Benefits

AI systems allow the artist to experiment widely and repeatedly, by:

·      selecting the datasets (training sets) to which the system is exposed – (careful artists use only out-of-copyright works, or even only their own prior works)

·      selecting the parameters and degree of creativity or uniqueness requested

·      assessing outputs

·      revisiting all the above.

I’ll suggest that any artist, in any discipline, follows an analogous sequence – using their knowledge of prior and current works rather than digitized datasets – but deciding on the degree and parameters of uniqueness required, then experimenting, and then assessing outcomes. 

“AI is used by artists because of its ability to provide surprising results, unexpected errors and glitches….  the non-deterministic nature of AI leads to errors and accidents that can have a critical role in the creation of an art piece” [Caramiaux & Alaoui 2022: 10].  The artist is “able to exploit the mistakes that AI models are able to produce” [p.11], selecting only those that serve the artist’s goals or vision.  The role of the artist or team of artists remains huge.

 Creative fields like video production, game creation, moviemaking, or advertising require characters, narrative arcs, set and costume design.  Innovative characters, story lines, and visual composition are prized – but so is verisimilitude.  Large Language Models and visual generative models (especially Generative Adversarial Networks, which create content and then assess them for verisimilitude) have been put to use in the pre-production of such works, as well as in their actual production.  These tools can be used to develop new combinations of the scenarios on which they’ve been trained, or to fathom the structures of those scenarios and create new rules and thus vastly new scenarios [Vijayalakahmi et al. 2026].

 Thus, the artistic use of AI tools can be at odds with the goals of many researchers and institutional users.  Many artists seek creativity and non-determinate outcomes rather than accuracy, reproducibility, or productivity;  many artists have carefully specified the datasets (or training sets) rather than using omnivorous and anonymous datasets.

 Implications

Here’s a 1928 quote from Paul Valery, which appears in Walter Benjamin’s 1935 book The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. 

“We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art.”

 Questions

 What are the implications for the future of art and artists? 

It’s likely that the expanded universe of artistic creation will render some traditional forms and styles of art less valued, just as photography paved the way for “modern art” and conceptual art, reducing the “wow” value placed on new art that skillfully and painstakingly reproduces what we see in the world [Benjamin 1935;  Ajani 2020].  However, “realistic” or mimetic visual art still hangs in galleries and remains popular, despite the success of photographic art.

I’d expect that creative activity that is not reliant on complete novelty – think of much pop music, basic cinematic soundtracks, pulp fiction, and what I might call background art and tourist art – may be generated by nearly autonomous AI.  The composers, writers, and visual artists who have made a living from these products may become redundant in financial terms.  However, there will always be people who just plain enjoy writing, composing, drawing, and painting: many will retain some, perhaps less remunerative foothold in their sale.

Which artists have the capability to understand the processes, the access to the technology, and the computing power to use them? [Caramiaux & Alaoui 2022]. 

 Does AI art appeal?  Does it sell?  

Early AI works have been eagerly promoted by galleries and auction houses, and have sold very well [Gaskin 2018].  Some studies have found that viewers’ assessment of a work’s creativity declines when its use of AI is noted.  Many art collectors care deeply about the artist’s “story,” motivations, and development over time, and may be put off by work that is largely the product of an automated process.  Many art viewers, collectors, and artists appreciate the literally hand-crafted nature of painting and sculpture – yet many sculptures are produced through foundries that produce the work to the specifications of the “artist.”  Indeed, “there are already painting machines being developed … that can turn certain digital images into material paintings done in oils or acrylics” [Kalyanaraman 2018].  

Finally, there is some evidence that younger viewers are attracted by the possibilities that AI art have opened [de Rooij 2025].

Where does authorship lie? 

Using AI to generate art is a collaboration between the “artist,” the algorithms, and the source materials – each of which has many “authors” [Ajani 2020].  But then, painting by hand is a collaboration between the makers of the tools, paints, surfaces, and all the art and writing about art of which the artist is aware.  And certainly the production of cinema or music is a many-faceted collaboration of writers/composers, performers, set designers, costumers, directors, sound engineers…

Can the resultant works be copyrighted? 

In most countries, copyright law requires a human author.  Which of the collaborators would that be?  [Gaskin 2018].  In 2023, a US Federal court judge agreed with the US Copyright Office’s refusal to grant copyright to the researcher who developed the AI system that created an original (digital) artwork [Small 2023].

References

Ajani, Gianmaria (2020).  Contemporary Artificial Art and the Law: Searching for an Author.  Brill Research Perspectives in Humanities and Social Sciences and Brill Research Perspectives in Art and Law.  ISBN 978-900444-2689 (e-book).

Benjamin, Walter.  (1935).  The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction (epigraph).  In Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, from the 1935 essay.  New York: Schocken Books, 1969.

Caramiaux, Baptiste and Sarah Fdili Alaoui (2022).  “Explorers of unknown planets”: practices and politics of artificial intelligence in visual arts.  Proceedings ACM Human-Computer Interaction 6: CSCW2, article 477.

Gaskin, Sam (2018).  When art is created by artificial intelligence sells, who gets paid?   https://scgaskin.wordpress.com/2018/09/19/when -an-ai-artist-makes-the-art-who-gets-paid/

 Kalyanaraman, Karthik (2018).  AI Art: a new photography moment.  Medium.  https://medium.com/@info_12534/ai-art-a-new-photography-moment-8d7009bfb696

de Rooij, Alwin (2025).  Bias against artificial intelligence in visual art: a meta-analysis.  Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.  https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/aca0000833.

Small, Zachary (2023).  As fight over A.I. artwork unfolds, judge rejects copyright claim.  The New York Times, 21 August.

Valéry, Paul (1928).  La Conquête de l'ubiquité (The Conquest of Ubiquity). Translated by Ralph Manheim, p. 225. Pantheon Books, Bollingen Series, New York, 1964.

Vijayalakahmi, A., M.V., Ulagammai, M., Cai, A., Parhi, M., and Wawage, P. (2026).  Large language models for generating creative concepts in visual art pre-production processes.  ShodhKosh: J. of Visual and Performing Arts, 7(4s): 161-72.

On abstraction in visual art

On Abstraction

Universality of abstraction in art

All art entails abstraction, as indeed does much human description and behavior.  Language requires generalized terms and abstract concepts – even a dry internal memo requires abstraction.  Any biography, novel, or poem engages in abstraction from actual or imagined events or emotions.  When a viewer interprets that a painting illustrates Mary holding the crucified Jesus, the viewer is applying imagery of a generalized woman and of a corpse, and applying the abstract concepts of Christianity.  The artist has abstracted – the figures may be larger or smaller than live figures, and the artist has likely adhered to the conventions of rendering three-dimensional figures on a flat plane.

So, abstraction is a given.  What is generally called “abstract art” is the breaking of the given culture’s conventions of rendering figures on a plane.  Paintings from a different culture or era will also seem abstract to our stereotypical current-day viewer.  (Of course, in generalizing a “stereotypical current-day viewer” we are generalizing and abstracting from the actual experiences and sensibilities of any specific viewer.)

The call for greater abstraction

Once we recognize that our consciousness is limited and limiting, it follows that the phenomena of which we are conscious are limited.  One role of artists is to explore the unconscious, and manifest elements from the unconscious so that viewers or readers might be able to lift the veil of their consciousness. 

In his support of JMW Turner’s painting, John Ruskin [1973;  originally written in 1843] “repudiates the rationalist philosophy of the 18th century, with its assumption that truth is timeless, abstract, and impersonal, and affirms the significance of another kind of truth, based on an awareness of historical or individual development, concrete sensuous experience, and the individual consciousness” [Kirchhoff, p.28].  “The artist's responsibility is to confront the appearance of nature, deduce its essence and retell or explain that essence in the work of art.” 

“When an artist experiences reality, his aesthetic experience can be expressed as either a material depiction, or an abstract formation. Van Doesburg regarded depiction as an 'indirect' form of artistic expression; only abstract formation based on an artist's true aesthetic experience of reality represents a pure form of artistic expression, as expressed by Mondrian in all his essays.[39][40][24] “  [Overy 1991: 61-62]

Ament [2002: 86] relates that Mark Tobey once advised Paul Horiuchi “’Don’t look at nature, Paul.  Feel it.’”

“Neoplasticism assumes that when the painter tries to shape reality (or truth), he never does this from what he sees (object, matter, the physical), but from what originates within himself (subject, idea, the spiritual),[59] or as Georges Vantongerloo puts it: "'La grande vérité, ou la vérité absolu, se rend visible à notre esprit par l'invisible" [The highest truth, or the absolute truth, is imagined through the invisible].[60] Mondrian calls this process 'internalization'.[7] “ [Overy 1991: 61-62]

“Non-objective” Abstraction

In 1936, Alfred Barr made the claim “The first artist to establish a system of absolutely pure geometrical abstract composition was the Russo-Polish painter Kasimir Malevich, of Moscow”. [p. 122]. 

Malevich first wrote the term Suprematism, in reference to his 1915 works, in a letter dated 24 September (old calendar) 1915 [Shatskikh 2012: 54].  In 1927 Malevich wrote “Under Suprematism I understand the supremacy of pure feeling in creative art [italics added].  To the Suprematist the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless;  the significant thing is feeling [that[ is called forth” [Malevich, trans. by Dearstyne 1959: 67].  Tupitsyn [2019] suggested that Malevich selected the term also “as an assertion of originality and preeminence over Western movements.”

Malevich’s Suprematist paintings and drawings eschew any representation of objects, people, or landscapes, except for his own visual interpretation of the feelings that such things invoke – in him, but his writing suggests that he perceived those feelings to be widespread.  Instead of visual representation, his work relies on rectilinear forms (occasionally circles or half circles) rendered in solid (or nearly solid) color (especially black, reds, and white) on a white background.

Geometric vs. Lyrical/Expressionist Abstraction

Barr [1936: 19] generalized “two main currents” of abstract art since the late 19th century:

Cézanne, Seurat  Suprematism, Constructivism, Neo-Plasticism: “intellectual, structural, architectonic, geometrical, rectilinear, and classical in its austerity and dependence upon logic and calculation.

Gauguin, Matisse  Kandinsky, Miro, Arp  Abstract Expressionism, action painting, lyrical abstraction:  intuitional, emotional, organic or biomorphic, curvilinear, and romantic in its exultation of the mystical, the spontaneous and the irrational. 

However, can we say that art of any sort is irrational?  Most art (of all disciplines) is rational, insofar as the artist:

• has a set of goals in mind (generally, regarding responses from an audience) and works systematically toward them;

• solves problems based on experience and observation;  and

• works with cognizance of the responses that other artworks have received;

The artist generally assumes that the intended audience will respond out of some prior experience with the genre.

Geometric Abstraction

At least three major movements in early-twentieth-century Europe attempted to create a common visual language for painting, sculpture, applied and graphic art, industrial design, and architecture:  Russian Constructivism (1915-34), De Stijl in the Netherlands (1917-28), and the Bauhaus in German (1919-33).  This ambitious goal seemed feasible because of a reliance on pure geometric forms, a reaction against florid design the late-nineteenth century, and the use of steel, concrete, and glass in architecture.  Purity and beauty were sought through simple geometric forms and primary colors [Overy 1991;  Jaffé et al., 1983].

Biomorphic Abstraction

Biomorphism in visual art refers to a style where abstract forms are modeled on naturally occurring patterns and living organisms, such as cells, embryos, or plants. It emerged as a distinct movement in the early 20th century as a reaction against the rigid, mechanized world of the industrial era the geometric abstraction of Constructivism, Suprematism, and de Stijl.  The movement drew from: 

·      Henri Bergson’s emphases on the élan vital or “vital impetus” as the source of truly new innovation and evolution, and on the superiority of intuition over intellect for perceiving the essence of reality;

·      Sigmund Freud’s emphasis on the subconscious as a driver of human behavior;  and 

·      Carl Jung’s emphasis on archetypes shared by all humans (the Self, the Persona, the Shadow, and the Anima/Animus).

In addition to the formal elements of curving and sometimes intersecting organic shapes, these philosophical and psychological underpinnings encouraged artists to engage in spontaneous modes of creation (“automatism’) that supposedly resulted from subconscious experiences or observations.

Most of my own biomorphic paintings are as rigorously planned as my geometric abstractions, but use curvilinear, seemingly organic, and irrational figures and grounds.

REFERENCES

Ament, Deloris T.   2002.  Iridescent Light: The Emergence of Northwest Art.  Photographs by Mary Randlett.  Seattle & London:  University of Washington Press.

Barr, Alfred H.  1936.  Cubism and Abstract Art.  New York:  The Museum of Modern Art.

Jaffé, H.L.C.; Bock, Manfred; Friedman, Mildred, eds.  1983.  De Stijl: 1917-1931. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff/Landshoff.Kirchhoff.

Frederick.  1984.  John Ruskin.  Farmington Hill, Mich.: Gale.

Malevich, Kazimir,  trans. by Howard Dearstyne.  1959.  The Non-Objective World.  Chicago:  P. Theobald.  (Originally written and translated into German in 1927.)

Overy, Paul.  1991.  De Stijl.  London:  Thames and Hudson.

Ruskin, John. 1873.  Modern Painters, Vol. 1.  American Publishers Corporation. 

Shatskikh, Aleksandra, trans. by Marian Schwartz.  2012.  Black Square: Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism.  New Haven:  Yale University Press.

Tupitsyn, Margarita.  2019.  The subject of nonobjective art.  Post (1 May).  https://post.moma.org/the-subject-of-nonobjective-art/, accessed 5 Nov 2020.

Authenticity in art

Last autumn, I suggested this topic for the January 2026 TCC Art Salon.  I didn’t give any further explication at the time, though what I meant was “What does it mean for a work of art – in any discipline – to be authentic?”

One colleague, who is very concerned about art produced from prompts to AI (artificial intelligence) agents, focused on whether the artist produced the work themselves, versus having asked an AI agent to produce the work from specified parameters. 

Another colleague, a photographer, opined that a photograph’s authenticity hinges on its presentation of what the artist saw, with limited post-shoot modification.

I provided a bit more context:  I often read that really good art is grounded in the creator’s experiences and psyche, and requires the artist to be open to remembering, feeling, and expressing those experiences and psyche.  Is that true, and if so, what does that mean in an artistic process?

A third colleague interpreted this using the phrase “authentic voice.”  He and others went on to elaborate the factors that get in the way of an artist using their authentic voice in their work:

·      thinking about the audience for the work;[1]

·      working on commission for a specific patron;

·      holding back aspects of the self that may be too strong or objectionable to some audiences;

·      repeating a process or theme that you’ve used several times before;

·      knowing exactly what outcome you want.

There’s another part of the claim boldfaced above:  that there is objectively “really good art,” and art that fails to meet that bar.  One artist asked “Who defines ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – shouldn’t it be the viewer?”  She went further – shouldn’t the viewer determine whether the work feels authentic to them?

In a subsequent conversation, a poet friend argued strongly that “good” denotes quality of technique and production, and command of key antecedents of the artist’s work – these are qualities of art that will influence others and stand the test of time.  However, art that isn’t “good” by these standards can still bring joy to the reader or viewer.  Art is indeed a conversation between artist and viewer/listener, and the meaning/import of the conversation depend on both.

If an artist is working quite strictly according to an existing popular (or historic) style, can the work be authentic?  No firm answers to this.  However, participants seemed to agree that when an artist develops their own “style,” they can retain authenticity even when staying within the parameters of that style.

I concluded for myself that authenticity means reflecting the sum total of the artist’s experiences, observations, and emotions – including those that differ from what others might expect from that particular artist.  This yields a certain amount of vulnerability, and a certain amount of originality. 

[1] He went further, suggesting that when you’re contemplating or working on a piece of visual art, the moment you realize that someone else is going to look at it, your process loses some authenticity.  If true, the only way to avoid this is to produce (some) works that you will not let anyone see.

My motivations and their manifestations

The experience of blackness is more than having a brown body.  I want to engage people in emotions and experiences that transcend the body.  Abstract, non-objective imagery can convey and elicit feelings and understanding that are more universal and permanent than the transitory ways in which we often perceive humanity and nature.  Its power is heightened because it does not preach;  instead, it reinforces the uniqueness of the viewer’s interpretation.

Geometric abstraction forms the basis of many of my compositions.  Geometric shapes interact with plain or carefully mottled backgrounds.  Their relative slopes, colors, and heft imply movement or stasis, balance or imbalance, and even power relationships.  I am especially inspired by non-objective “Suprematism” championed by Kazimir Malevich and his contemporaries in pre-Revolutionary Russia, and I am generally inspired by 20th-century hard-edge and color-field paintings. 

Over the past two years, I’ve been pursuing color-rich biomorphic abstraction.  These carefully crafted, curvilinear forms interact in visually playful ways, sometimes portrayed against wildly gestural backgrounds.  The forms are quite abstract, some seeming more animal-like, some more plant-like.  Viewers are more likely to uncover (within themselves, really) meaning and interaction when the forms seem organic – but are sufficiently vaguely rendered to prevent ascribing characteristics of any particular species.  The paintings are also just plain fun to observe!

“The Impossibility of Knowing,” the title of one on-going series, refers to the strength of memory and imagination, compared to what is “real” or “observed.”  In these paintings, a solid shape, figure, or silhouette interacts with its mirrored outline, against a shadowed background.  Something that seems substantive is augmented with its mirror, shadow, future, or past.  The interplay creates visual dynamism as each shape is pulled in its opposite direction, and interpretive dynamism as each object or figure interacts with its complement.