(continuing a series)
I love this drawing of a horseman by Rodin:
Over the years he evolved from meticulous drawings (usually drawn from plaster casts or classical prints) to loose, fluid drawings where expressiveness was more important than anatomical proportion. He decided that many of the details he originally labored over were trivial. He became more interested in "large, rhythmical contours," which were often little more than wispy sketches. As his drawings became simpler and more abstract they sometimes gained in power.
Rodin took his drawings as seriously as his famous sculptures. He insisted, "Drawing is the key to knowledge.... Without drawing, no truth."
Rodin drew as simply and naturally as he was able. Interestingly, as Rodin became more famous and his drawings became simpler, numerous counterfeiters and fakers tried to imitate his work. There have been museum exhibitions dedicated to distinguishing Rodin's "authentic" loose, airy drawings from the numerous counterfeit loose, airy drawings-- a challenging task.
68 comments:
That female figure with a sheet of paper still white would look awfully modern.
Like rare comets, these.
Hippopísthia last seen in in 2013, before that '06... erratic orbit?
Do you have a link to the original interview where the quote, "Drawing is the key to knowledge.... Without drawing, no truth." comes from? Would love to see the context.
The best long form interview with Rodin I've ever found is his "Conversations with Paul Gsell." Cheaply available in the Dover edition. Contains excellent discussions on not only drawing, but movement, modelling, and mystery as well.
An interview with Judith Cladel in 1914, according to Christies. Might be somewhere here ? - https://archive.org/details/rodinmanhisart0000clad/page/n7/mode/2up
Bill
Kev Ferrara-- The quotes are from the book, The Drawings of Rodin (Praeger Publishers 1971) published in connection with the National Gallery of Art. The first quote is cited as coming from the Claudel interview. The second is cited as coming from Dujardin-Beaumetz, "Rodin's Reflections on Art" reprinted as a chapter in Albert Elsen's 1965 book on Auguste Rodin at p.161.
Modern art is Jewish art.
Dickhead troll.
Bill
"Dickhead troll.
Bill"
I'm not sure why this upsets you. What is wrong with art that reflects Jewish experiences and intellect especially if the consensus is that Modern Art is great achievement in the history of human art because of its many innovations?
The second part of your statement, sadly, requires so many clauses and exceptions to it as to render it functionally untrue, before it can be properly stapled back to onto your forehead.
I'd never associate the Jewish culture and intellect with such garbage.
(It's amusing how leftists incessently vent their antisemitism by trying to ventriloquise it through others.)
Bill
The quotes are from the book, The Drawings of Rodin (Praeger Publishers 1971)
Thanks guys. Unfortunately in neither French nor English - via search engine nor in the various online book resources - can I find the quotes in their original context online. Not even in close paraphrase. The citation for the 1913 Cladel interview, which is available readily in many searchable forms, seems like either a misattribution or a misquote. However, the sentiments certainly sound like Rodin.
”I love this drawing of a horseman by Rodin”
I've always assumed the horse and rider watercolor was a prelim; a note to himself. Although it does having passing similarities to some of the blunt “illustrations” from Twenty Seven Poems from the Flowers of Evil.
I understand Rodin's desire, in the open life-drawings, to get to the essence of a figural gesture with the minimum of fuss and tension. Not just because he’s trying to capture necessarily fleeting poses by his models, so there’s no time for digging in. But also because his more serious and ambitious sculptural work is so obviously suffused with expressive and anatomic intensity and created with such evident physical effort over extended periods of time that blithe graphic work feels like the perfect complement to it. A palette cleanser, so to speak.
The particular drawing chosen in your post is unusual in that it captures more anatomic knowledge in the outline than most of the others in the oeuvre. Rodin’s unique combination of knowledge, confidence, and design skill makes him counterfeit-proof. When he gets too sloppy-quick, the work becomes almost generic in authorship.
Presumably, Picasso is indebted to Rodin for not only legitimizing such graphic work publicly as “fine” work, but also for pioneering it. (Insofar as we can say that Rodin wasn’t just inspired by ancient graphic line art, but actually altered or added something to it.)
Couldn't find any more on it either. Maybe she was paraphrasing Rodin on this; I think she catalogued his drawings, and that this was arranged during his life (?), so both an area of her special concern and something they must have discussed.
Alas, the Dover editions aren't as cheap as they used to be, used to snag loads for a pittance. Rodin could identify essential truths in words pretty often, so I'd be very interested in seeing the interview you mentioned.
Bill
(In case anyone else is - https://archive.org/details/artconversations0000rodi/page/n7/mode/2up )/B.
Well hallelujah and god bless anyone who is not only here to talk about the ideas of art but is also willing to do their homework. Let me see if I can be more helpful for such a worthy cause. The book I cited, The Drawings of Rodin, contains a long essay by J. Kirk Varnedoe entitled "Rodin As A Draftsman-- A Chronological Perspective." That essay says the Cladel quote can be found at page 26 of the 1950 definitive Grasset edition of "Rodin, sa vie glorieuse et inconnue." The second full quote reads "Only the knowledge of drawing permits one to compare, judge, express simplicity in fixing the essential... without drawing, no truth." Varnedoe says this quote can be found at page 161 of the 1965 Prentice-Hall book, "Auguste Rodin: Readings on his life and work."
The drawing of the horseman was in Alfred Stieglitz's personal collection of Rodin drawings until he donated it to the Art Institute of Chicago, where it resides today. I don't know anything more about its intended use.
Kev Ferrara-- I too have been struck by the contrast between the dense structural integrity of Rodin's sculptures and the light, airy nature of his drawings. I suppose everybody has been. Especially because Rodin attached such importance to his drawings. It would be one thing if they were just random musings to be thrown away, but they weren't. A palette cleanser? Perhaps. But they almost seem more like a separate channel for a type of Rodin's creative inspiration that could never be cast in bronze or carved in marble.
For me, an interesting piece of the puzzle is that so many people who could not successfully copy Rodin's sculptures felt it would be so easy to copy his scribbled drawings. So many bandits and so many admirers plagiarized his work because they thought they could, and historians have had a deuce of a time trying to distinguish the authentic drawings from the phonies. I'll ask the same question that so many use to impugn abstract art: "If these drawings are so dang special, why are they so easy for any art student to plagiarize?"
When the avenue to fully-realised three dimensional form was open to him, perhaps there was little point in 'feigning' or emphasising that over the movement that's in the drawings ? Some of which seem concerned with a passage of gesture or movement, beyond a frozen moment in it.
Bill
"The greatest difficulty that one encounters in art, that which must be surmounted before everything else and which dominates all others, comes from the necessity of drawing well; only the knowledge of drawing permits one to compare, judge, express simplicity in fixing the essential. By means of drawing, the work takes on the power of natural things; without drawing, no truth.
Thus it is important to exert the mind and eye constantly to see, to understand in order to render well.
Study by contours is a magnificent tool: but it demands great mental tension to render in all their character and truth the multiple forms which it shows successively.
In order to render the contours, one must follow nature with tireless patience and determination.
I may add that the will to follow nature exactly develops taste, exercises the reason, shows wisdom.
It gives calm within strength, serenity within the fullness of expression of life.
In any case, it's the observation of nature, the personal vision which the artist's work reveals."
"If these drawings are so dang special, why are they so easy for any art student to plagiarize?"
I don't think all of them are 'dang special' - a few are pretty ephemeral. Part of their esteem maybe has elevated them above similar sketches by other greats because of the emphasis he gave to this part of his work ?
Bill
Versus this
"Above all, establish clearly the large planes of the figures that you are sculpting. Accentuate vigorously the orientation that you give to each part of the body, head, shoulders, pelvis, legs. Art requires decision. It is through the well-stated lines that you are able to catch depth. When your planes are set, all is found. Your statue is already alive. The details grow and place themselves out of their own.
When you model, do not ever think in terms of surface, but of relief. Let your mind conceive all surface as the extremity of a volume that is pushed out from the back. Imagine the forms as being pointed towards you. All life surges from the center, then grows and blossoms from the inside towards the outside. In the same way, in beautiful sculpture one can always feel an interior impulsion. This is the secret of the antique art.
You, painters, observe in the same way the reality in depth. Look, for instance, at a portrait painted by Raphael. When this master shows a person from the front, he makes the chest go obliquely and gives you thus the illusion of the third dimension. All great painters have tried to sound space. It is in this notion of depth that their strength resides. Remember this: there are no traits, there are only volumes. When you are drawing, don’t worry about the contour, but about the relief."
Bill
Bill wrote, "I don't think all of them are 'dang special' - a few are pretty ephemeral."
I agree. In fact a LOT of them seem pretty ephemeral (although I suppose one can't be sure how many of those are the counterfeits). But some of them are so wonderfully imaginative and original with the liberties they take with the human body (https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2013/10/simpler-is-better.html ) I can understand how Rodin might need to build up momentum with lesser scribbles in order to achieve those leaps.
>>>"A palette cleanser, so to speak."
I see what you did there! Points for the Double Kiss/skill shot!
~ FV
I too have been struck by the contrast between the dense structural integrity of Rodin's sculptures and the light, airy nature of his drawings.
For myself I see no essential mismatch between the Rodin's "light, airy" drawing style and the materiality of his sculptures. Rodin used clay, a mailable substance particularly sensitive to haptic gesture, which is to say his conception of form was of the modelling kind rather than the carving kind. Secreting rather than disclosing. Building rather than abrading. This is why his aesthetic facture resembles that of the volcanic rather than the eroded. All to say I believe his graphic work perfectly reflects the modelling proclivity.
Thanks for typing those out Bill.
I scouted around for more context on those excerpts and noticed different takes on presumably the same utterances by Rodin:
1. "You, painters, observe in the same way the reality in depth. Look, for instance, at a portrait painted by Raphael. When this master shows a person from the front, he makes the chest go obliquely and gives you thus the illusion of the third dimension. All great painters have tried to sound space. It is in this notion of depth that their strength resides. Remember this: there are no traits, there are only volumes. When you are drawing, don’t worry about the contour, but about the relief."
2. "Art only begins when there is an inner truth. Let all your forms and colours show feeling. You, painters, observe truth in depth. Look, for example, at a portrait painted by Raphael. When he shows a person facing you, he makes the chest recede obliquely, giving the illusion of a third dimension. All painters are probing space. Their strength lies in the notion of depth." Remember this; there are no lines, there are only volumes. When you draw, do not worry about the contours, think only of the relief. It is the relief that determines the contours.”
I'd guess that the first version you found online is a mechanical google or AI translation from the French. Whereas the second was done by a human interpreter who, luckily, knew a thing or two about art.
Either way, there's a lot of gold in these quotes. And I'm particularly struck by just how identical Rodin's thinking was to what was being taught here at the same time. With almost no difference at all between advanced sculpting and painting theory. Even down to the bargue-like understanding of the figural envelope.
I should add that these lines:
"By means of drawing, the work takes on the power of natural things; without drawing, no truth. Thus it is important to exert the mind and eye constantly to see, to understand in order to render well. Study by contours is a magnificent tool: but it demands great mental tension to render in all their character and truth the multiple forms which it shows successively.
In order to render the contours, one must follow nature with tireless patience and determination. I may add that the will to follow nature exactly develops taste, exercises the reason, shows wisdom."
...do not seem to reference his quick life sketches, which probably are five minute poses at absolute maximum, more likely three minute apiece.
I also don't think Rodin is speaking of drawing in terms of writing instruments; pencils and pens. Rather I think he is speaking of drawing as a general matter, as the means by which expressive accuracy - in relation to the subject or object - is achieved: Proportion, anatomy, sculptural form, gesture, and naturalism.
The first unsigned 'anon' one wasn't from me. I'm not sure where it's from but seems to be the source of part of the earlier quote.
The one I cut and pasted below that - no laborious typing - is from Rodin's 'testament'/advice to young painters and sculptors. (Just sourced from a blog, supposed to be human-ly translated, but who knows.) Cheers for the alternate version. That last sentence is very important.
Re - your remark below, is 'drawing' (or the french equivalent term he used) ever used in a manner that can include or is specific to sculpting, in the same way 'sketch' is sometimes used by sculptors (eg, Lanteri) for trial or other work without 'finish' ? Which would cover the broader sense you give.
(Bill)
"Re - your remark below, is 'drawing' (or the french equivalent term he used) ever used in a manner that can include or is specific to sculpting, in the same way 'sketch' is sometimes used by sculptors (eg, Lanteri) for trial or other work without 'finish' ? Which would cover the broader sense you give."
I can't claim to know the full suite of connotations of French art terms as used in 1911. However, I have often heard and read sculptors talk about sculptures being "out of drawing." Which surely translates to "inaccuracy in mimesis" rather than "poorly penciled." The terms "rendering", "contours" and "lines" are used extensively in sculpting, also not in reference to graphite dragging on paper. It stands to reason that a sculptor would mostly use clay/volumes to practice mimesis, study form, and record natural observations, rather than pencil or pen. Rodin's sketching was almost always him walking around his studio manipulating a handful of clay in response to his models' poses.
David, would you ever think about doing a book on Ben Stahl as part of the Auad line?
Check out the new OpenAI multi-modal image generation model
Wow, its stealing and creating instant hack work even better now!
~ FV
David if your taking requests it would be interesting if you did an article on Don Rosa and his troubles with the Disney corporation.
“Works better now” is a profound understatement. It can take images and text into the same prompt (multimodality). So you can, for example, give it five images and explain how you want it to use elements from all five in its output.
Or you can annotate its output (drawing on top of its drawing) and explain what you want it to do with those annotations.
Are those "five images" somebody else's work?
Think about what you are saying.
~ FV
I’m not arguing with you about copyright or what constitutes stealing in art. That’s not at all interesting or relevant to me.
I’m just talking about the quality of the model and the art it generates.
I'm seeing it mostly as a Studio Ghibli filter for photos as the meme style of the week. Meanwhile Hayao Miyazaki in no way offered his name to this tech. He said in fact about AI "I strongly feel this is an insult to life itself." He said it showed that humans were losing faith in themselves. Was this an elaborate effort to demoralize Miyazaki in particular? As some kind of sick vengeance for him not being onboard with AI? So he never makes another film? I guess you don't give a f--k, right?
~ FV
To the Anonymous who asked about Ben Stahl-- an interesting request. Norman Rockwell used to say, ''We are but illustrators, but Ben Stahl is among the masters,'' but you rarely hear anyone speak of Stahl today. He was popular, a founder of the Famous Artists School but now his style doesn't seem to be appreciated much, even by collectors. I'd be very interested in hearing why you single him out.
I don't believe that the Auad line is publishing new books these days, but I've written about illustration for three other publishers as well.
I don't know much about Don Rosa other than what I (and presumably everyone else) can readily find on the internet. He seems to be one of dozens (hundreds?) of artists who've had contractual issues with Disney over the years, just as Walt himself lost the rights to his first creation in a contract dispute.
There's a lot to be said about artists who've have "troubles" with syndicates, publishers, agents, and movie studios. One could write treatises about Walt Kelly, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Martin (and perhaps Don Rosa?) but without any direct inside information it's hard to see how I could add value. If you have any views about Rosa, feel free to add them here.
David, about Don Rosa it just seems to me that Disney corporation went above and beyond to bring this man down. Yes I agree there are many artists who have been screwed over by corporations, Siegel and Shuster, Bill Finger. I just thought it would make for an interesting post to cover Don and all the others. https://youtu.be/qhDge_uZHTQ?si=eJaD5pkXQYTlVXUy
And Don Rosa was never under contract with Disney.
Like I said, not that interested in the copyright argument.
As for the Ghibli-styled pictures from history, many of them are really quite beautiful.
The quality is also shit.
Bill
Compared to what? Compared to the real Dean Cornwell or compared to Chris Ware or Josef Albers? It’s obviously better than Ware and Albers. There are plenty of other professionals it beats too. And are GPT’s images really that much worse than actual Ghibli stills? I’m not convinced that if I showed this group a mix of GPT Ghiblis and real Ghibli stills, you’d be able to reliably know the difference.
AI is now producing digital art at a professional level. For those claiming it “sucks”, how good does it need to be before it doesn’t? Does it have to beat every digital artist alive today? Does it need to pick up a brush with a robot hand and match every artist alive or dead?
There were also chess players who insisted AI was terrible at chess right up until it beat Kasparov.
It can only match surface effects (and superficial ones, at that) so far as I've seen. It's lines have no constructive reality. No 'anatomy' (if the term can be expanded to the world at large). A lot of professional art doesn't either, in fairness.
Chess is a bad example as (I presume) it's possibilities are finite, so it's like comparing humans to a calculator.
"...how good does it need to be before it doesn’t?"
Interesting question. If it ever gets to such an end point, it may force people to revaluate what they think makes us so special. Lots of balloons of vanity, however warranted, could be popped. But there is nothing 'in' it. The simplest thing said that arises from and is truthful to the inner qualitative experience of the human who said it is greater than a novel or sonnet calibrated by a simulator. Same goes for art work.
Of course, a recipient of the simulation can have a real qualitative experience. Which forces a recognition, I think, that art can conduit, and it should be its aim to adequately house, the qualitative; but only the qualitative is real, not the abstract materiality.
Why would anyone want to surrender their ability to connect with the human - and with the world through the way facets of it are uniquely reflacted in other humans in a way we otherwise would not know, or only fleetingly - by participating in such endeavours ?
It can't reach beyond forgery, not just of other styles but in an absolute sense.
Bill
"It's amusing how leftists incessently vent..."
Not this BS again. Man, you need to get some help.
Solomon....Israëls...fantastic jewish artists. Rodin wasn't. So why did you bring it up ? Let go your pain, don't nurse it. Shalom.
Bill
I bet there are people doing double blind tests. It must be interesting to cross the data between people who picks what is AI generated and not with people who think it's good and not. But these tests still sort of miss the point.
Anyway, I think that generative AI will destroy any artistic activity linked to economy in any way. Also, anything that 's supported by a medium. In the far capitalistic future there will only be "decorative arts"/muzak, and live theatre/performances.
Also, at some point the parasiting effect of AI art will consume itself because in the future no one will be exposed to the original Ghibly works anymore. It will not evoke anything. At some point AI training will burn through everything that was ever produced and everything will lose meaning, but at the same time nothing new will be produced because the economy of reusing old stuff will crush it.
Oh, this post was mine
I didn't bring anything up about Jews or anything else. This was my first comment. You had to raise what you think all "leftists" do. You're a sick man and you need help with your obsession.
People will either reject it or conform themselves - their behaviour and expectations - to it. Which will atrophy what it is to be human.
What did you mean by "anything that 's supported by a medium" ? (I think I'm missing your meaning). Do you mean, eg., publishing or film industries supporting artists whose work can be used by them ?
Bill
A whole five days eating away at you. Not even that marathon tranny-porn debauch could ease your impotent fury.
Bill
Compared to what? Compared to the real Dean Cornwell or compared to Chris Ware or Josef Albers? It’s obviously better than Ware and Albers. There are plenty of other professionals it beats too. And are GPT’s images really that much worse than actual Ghibli stills? I’m not convinced that if I showed this group a mix of GPT Ghiblis and real Ghibli stills, you’d be able to reliably know the difference.
AI is now producing digital art at a professional level. For those claiming it “sucks”, how good does it need to be before it doesn’t? Does it have to beat every digital artist alive today? Does it need to pick up a brush with a robot hand and match every artist alive or dead?
There were also chess players who insisted AI was terrible at chess right up until it beat Kasparov.
This is a fair point. Its like that joke; What do you call the person with the worst passing score on the Medical Licensing Exam? (Answer: Doctor.)
The questions of intellectual property law, morals, and ethics, however, remain open. And the larger right-brain (wholistic) questions that have no category which Miyazaki hints at remain open as well. What is the teleology here? Certainly anything that gets digitized and is unprotected will become worthless instantly as a good, commodity, service, etc. The grand design of every software company involved in the digital arts was always to take over the entire business. And then rent it back to the artists. And then cut them out entirely.
It's the whole "multipolar trap" thing, again and again. Every commercially effective shortcut gets picked up market wide, and lowers the ethics and quality overall. The inevitable race to the bottom happens shortcut by shortcut. Until the whole thing becomes unfun, uncool, and unviable and nobody talented bothers entering the market anymore. The only way out is a re-moralization of the market. And I think that entails a return to the real. The virtual world is a liar's paradise.
"The grand design of every software company involved in the digital arts was always to take over the entire business. And then rent it back to the artists. And then cut them out entirely. [...] It's the whole 'multipolar trap' thing, again and again."
For every multipolar trap/Malthusian trap/prisoner's dilemma, there is a stag hunt. Take agriculture, where each individual sacrifices something they value (free time) for personal benefit (food security), and in doing so, also generates a societal benefit (excess food).
There's also the Robin Hood game, in which one player (Robin Hood) harms another player (the Sheriff of Nottingham), providing a benefit both to himself (he keeps some gold) and to others (who receive gold for protecting him). Consider antitrust cases: one party (a small company) uses antitrust laws to harm another party (a big company), and in doing so, helps all other companies.
I think it's too early to tell which game we're in here:
- One party (an AI-using artist) harms all other parties (artists and art consumers) for short-term personal gain (using AI art to make money) through externalities (driving down the value of human art).
- One party sacrifices a personal value (self-respect) for short-term gain (using AI to make money), which leads to another party gaining value (money going to AI companies), ultimately producing value for everyone (AI technology becoming advanced enough to create better art than humans ever did).
- One party (AI companies) harms another party (artists) to provide value for all (more art and greater access to art).
To know which game we're in, we'd have to know the end state of AI art. Can you see 500 years into the future? I can't. It might be paradise, or it might be hell.
And I think most technological advances seem to oscillate between heaven and hell. Agriculture made food extremely plentiful for former hunter-gatherers, but eventually led to subsistence farming in the Dark Ages. Later, it provided widespread food access after 1900, but at the cost of increasingly processed foods. I wouldn’t be surprised if AI art follows a similar cycle between heaven and hell -- and what would the Nash equilibrium of that be?
> What did you mean by "anything that 's supported by a medium" ? (I think I'm
> missing your meaning). Do you mean, eg., publishing or film industries
> supporting artists whose work can be used by them ?
> Bill
I was thinking art that is mediated, this is can be stored, transmitted and/or replicated. By opposition to live performances.
“I think it's too early to tell which game we're in here:”
AI, once again, has no conception of what it is saying, and is totally dependent on existing IP and existing human work. It has no idea when it is lying or cheating, let alone why that is a bad thing. That’s why its results are derivative and/or slop and always will be derivative and/or slop. (The average of two or more insights is not another insight. It is slop.) Thus, as a method of making “artworks” it will only ever be a shortcut, an unethical, cheap and quick way to get work out the door. It will assist in making animated movies/video games and in special effects in live action.
You’ll note that everybody you see using it is already giving away their results. Which shows that AI’s visual end-products are already understood as essentially valueless. Which is to say, as distractions rather than artworks. (This usually goes for digitizations of real art as well; anything in digitized, perfectly scalable form has zero market value.) Distractions are the lowest form of culture.
However, barring any litigatory intervention, as you imply, it will certainly outperform the low end of any digital creative market, wiping out the software jockey, photobasher, and stock art contingent.
If you think that’s a good thing, culturally, I can’t agree. The masses of weak artists provide a kind of broad cultural, emotional, and economic foundation for the strong artists at the peak of the pyramid. Unemployed, that base will fill up its time with meaningless distractions, and politics, resentment, drugs, and pornography will find them and destroy their love of beauty.
Great artists who do real physical art, personally expressive/handwritten, may use AI here and there in their process, but will never make work that is substantially dependent on it. (However many would-be photo painter types may migrate toward being AI painters instead.)
Regarding game theoretics; in a complex, high population, highly diverse, and geographically distributed labor environment – coupled with perfect scalability of the involved digital tools, I hardly think any given actor is considering social cooperation. Our minds cannot deal with population wide or highly scalable competition; at some point we simply default to anxiety and panic. And The Desperate are prone to act without regard to values, generally speaking.
Richard (or anyone else who knows) where can I "Check out the new OpenAI multi-modal image generation model"? What's the best way for an artist to get started training with AI? Is there a Youtube video or a website that would explain how to use AI to create images? Especially the "multi-modal image generation model"
JSL
JSL -
So, if you're just generating AI pictures onesie twosie, I would get a ChatGPT account, log in, and start goofing around with the 4o model. It takes a little getting used to how to talk to it, but if you don't try to "trick" it, and just really carefully explain what you want it will eventually get you there.
Eventually you come up with workflows or patterns that you know work, and you start doing them over and over.
I started experimenting with a new workflow last night for generating pop cozy mysteries. The new multimodal model generates illustrations in the style of Dean Cornwell at each beat, such as characters meeting, one finding something, or opening a vessel. The illustrations then inform the writing, which guides the next beat, generating another image, and so on. If I get bored, I tell it "T", which tells it to add a turning point. Saying E drops some exposition. C starts a new chapter. Pressing S starts a new scene.
Yes, it is that stupid. But, frankly, I am getting incredible results. It lets me read stories that are perfectly targeted to what I like with just a little nudging. There are books I badly wanted to read, but not enough to labor over themself, now I get to read them at my leisure.
I should add that changing the artist, completely changes the story. I had it make a Ghibli art mystery, and it was a little too saccharine.
“I hardly think any given actor is considering social cooperation.”
That’s the thing about game theory. It doesn’t predict that social cooperation is something an actor needs to thank about directly. The independent selfish actors in the stag hunt still naturally generate symbiosis.
This is also, as a matter of fact, the game theory definition of capitalism, a system which I think works remarkably well for generating symbiotic relationships between selfish individuals.
I have almost no history of being a luddite, but there is something deeply, deeply off about where all this is going. Kev's sentence 'the virtual world is a liar's paradise' is, in short, prophetic. An arc is being conceived by those who wish to preserve the sanity of dry land as the digital floodwaters rise and swim before our eyes.
I confess to having very little experience creating images with AI. Most of my attention has been devoted to how AI is affecting the creation and application of the law, how AI will perform human-like tasks and control the standards that govern us (such as preparing legislation or evaluating guilt or innocence). AI is great for certain empirical functions but its treatment of the value judgments of the law are alarming, and not inapposite to art, which mostly consists of value judgments.
Many laws focus on a person's "intent," but how do we measure the intent of a machine as a legal actor? How does a machine assisting a future jury fairly evaluate the intent of a human suspected of misconduct? Moral interactions are at the heart of many of our laws; machines have learned the text of those laws, but so far they have trouble inferring moral intuitions necessary for determining guilt or innocence. In sheer speed and volume of production, human efforts seem incapable of keeping up with what AI produces (AI creates and disseminates misinformation faster than the deliberative processes of the law are capable of evaluating it.)
I raise this parallel on an art blog because the legal community is actively struggling with how to regulate AI, and even whether regulation is still possible. (For example, lawyers may wish to ban deepfake pornography which creates highly realistic nudes of celebrities or children, but governments no longer have the ability to do it. That ship has sailed.) In my experience, lawyers are far better than artists at regulating things; their training is in taxonomy and the systematic control of behavior. Artists who wish to control the growth and application of AI in art are unlikely to have much of an impact.
"That’s the thing about game theory. It doesn’t predict that social cooperation is something an actor needs to thank about directly. The independent selfish actors in the stag hunt still naturally generate symbiosis.
This is also, as a matter of fact, the game theory definition of capitalism, a system which I think works remarkably well for generating symbiotic relationships between selfish individuals."
I rarely believe in word, symbol, or modeling arguments; they're mostly hasty and facile heuristics. “Game Theory” is a modeling system and all models are game-like guesses, and games tend to be severely lacking in nonlinearities and naturalism. To see them as real is academicism and scientism. The only accurate model of reality is reality itself.
When Maxfield Parrish’s prints became a phenomenon in the 1920s, every print was expertly printed with high quality ink on a piece of high quality paper, dried, stored, then packed safely, shipped safely, and so on. His work brought millions joy because of its unique technical excellence, lovely imagined world, and elevating beauty. He made money. The paper and ink suppliers, their suppliers and employees made money. The print house, shipping folk, and post office and its workers made money. The gasoline suppliers and gas stations made money. And so on.
All those people were physically connected, working together to complete a general task, each benefiting individually (and on behalf of their families, friends, and communities) the whole social-commercial system benefiting… which others seeking work/pride/community could join into.
Meanwhile every aspect that played into this system was limited, the paper, the ink, the gasoline, ad space and ad budget, Parrish’s output, his materials, his health, the laborers, daylight, and so on. So there were key decisions that had to be made about investment of personal and business resources. Every single soul involved was invested in the enterprise in some way or another, all committing something irrevocable in the moment; resulting in interweaving risks of many different types and shared rewards across the system. That's how real community is formed.
Which is to say, in a real market there are real individuals in real social environments. With real needs, skills and values - and limited resources - providing benefit to gain benefit. Everything they did, the entire positive Parrish print enterprise, resonated outward into the wider community; monetarily, socially, ethically, morally, as families, motivationally, artistically, spiritually if you’ll allow it, and so on.
Where is the parallel with infinitely scalable, wholly mechanical, infinitely generative, anonymous/impersonal, essentially costless and riskless, utterly derivative content systems in a wholly virtual environment?
The great tragedy of the digital commons here is not only the eradication of community, work, aesthetic/poetic coherence, and meaning, but also the unrelenting absorption of the attention by those now left without community, work, aesthetic/poetic coherence, and meaning by a constantly evolving cultural Terminator that can flood every market with remixed stolen goods.
David,
I don’t think many share your confidence in lawyers especially when these same lawyers are using AI.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/ai-hallucinations-court-papers-spell-trouble-lawyers-2025-02-18/
“Where is the parallel with infinitely scalable, wholly mechanical, infinitely generative, anonymous/impersonal, essentially costless and riskless, utterly derivative content systems in a wholly virtual environment?”
We can’t know. That is what I’ve argued.
Could AI art turn out to be entirely Malthusian? Maybe, but that seems like a “hasty and facile heuristic”. Everyone doubts the usefulness of game theory models, except for the one that fits their predictions (the multipolar trap game is fine, but the stag hunt is “severely lacking in nonlinearities and naturalism”.)
“ flood every digital market with remixed stolen goods”
I expect that artists in the future will have to better protect their works to keep them scarce. It reminds me of that story about Mozart pirating Miserere from the Vatican.
I think it’s also worth noting that the scarcity/piracy problem predates generative AI. What percentage of Instagram, Twitter and Blogger users have properly licensed the artworks they post? I have hard drives full of artwork not yet in the public domain that I’ve paid nothing for. I’m sure you do too.
It’s hard to imagine art getting any less valuable than it already is — completely free.
ChatGPT (free) now has an image generator which I’ve played with a few times but the images it generates while competent are rather boring. Maybe I need to work on my prompts.
"but how do we measure the intent of a machine as a legal actor? How does a machine assisting a future jury fairly evaluate the intent of a human suspected of misconduct? Moral interactions are at the heart of many of our laws; machines have learned the text of those laws, but so far they have trouble inferring moral intuitions necessary for determining guilt or innocence."
I know the language makes people use these terms - 'intent', 'inferring moral intuitions', etc - when speaking about machines as metaphors, and when pressed we hear back that they were only intended to refer to the machine-functions as only *analogous to those capacities, which are solely human.
But the language shapes the concept, it determines how people conceive of these things (a bit Sapir-Whorf) in mental habit.
The machine cannot have these capacities. Not an iota. This would be the case even if they carried out these functions perfectly. If this slips from the mind, even fitfully, the real meanings of these terms and the realities they are based on dissociate in the afflicted person's experience (something similar happens to those whose thinking is embedded in certain kinds of materialist academic language and concept).
We waver between experience (the qualitative) and abstraction (models) all the time in our beaviour, but are only healthy and sane when gounded in the former.
Law, surely, is one of the most important areas where this needs to not only be borne in mind, but actually *experienced in constancy as prime urgrund.
All the conceptual pillars on which it is based - Justice, truth, mercy, its recognition of such things as love and fear as real - were formerly conceived of as gods because they are pillars of actual qualia.
I can't believe there are people really considering using this technology to inform judgements.
The description of the workings of the a.i. story/illustrations, above - the "workflow generating pop cozy mysteries" - reminds me of kinds of games that existed in the 18th century that would have characters, scenarios, plot-events, etc, sometimes on cards that could be shuffled to produce kinds of stories. A harmless diversion, nobody really weighted too much on the results; I think Goethe or someone of that era toyed with it for providing spontaneous bases for composition proper.
So, as with the effluvia of 'a.i.' today, there can be real qualitative experience on the recipient end. But it's a can-and-string with no second can at the hither end.
If this is forgotten, the recipient's experience is divorced from the normal causal ties that link his experiences with other people or world-realities. The underpinning of experience in the contiguous overlap of the Rational/meaning and quality-reality is lost. It's not a fiction that's then experienced, which properly is is a refraction/fractal of reality, but a lie.
However we came to know the quality-concepts, alternate processes of striving and revelation, they are not a given that can be taken for granted. Machines cannot know them (or anything for that matter...), think or become human, but humans (or part of us) can become like machines.
A child feels cheated if the stories they are told and the things they contain were not given them in good faith by a believing giver but to manipulate, but the truths in the story might remain for them inviolate and can be found again elsewhere.
It's not hard to imagine, through processes of accretion in the cultural changes we are witnessing - especially those which, when moulding the young who are still growing, occlude the realities of quality-united-with-meaning, which are his proper teachers - results in a calamitous dimunition of the human; a widespread pathology of dissociation.
Existing in 'effect' without meaning or reality, like junkies, most of their sensibilities lost or denuded; those remaining really just throbbing nerve-endings connected to nothing.
Bill
“Everyone doubts the usefulness of game theory models, except for the one that fits their predictions (the multipolar trap game is fine, but the stag hunt is severely lacking in nonlinearities and naturalism.)”
Artists were talking about the problem of shortcuts degrading the field as early as 1905. And it did. This was seen in the wild, which is why Ethics was such an important component of the Golden Age artists’ world. And why there was strict training, personal vetting, a guild system, endless social clubs, and industry magazines that called out issues as they arose. Editors and artists socialized. People knew what was happening and why. Weaker talents with strong ambition and nil ethics will copy, cheat, fudge, and steal to stay in the business. And they will lowball. Who doesn’t know that? And if that is allowed, others follow suit. Yep, sure do. This was common knowledge. It didn’t require theory or mathematization.
Meanwhile, if you please; apply the Stag Hunt paradigm to the infinitely scalable stealing and production machine under discussion, so I may be enlightened as to its applicability most of all, but also its naturalism and the nonlinearities it correctly models.
What percentage of Instagram, Twitter and Blogger users have properly licensed the artworks they post?
As I’ve said, every technology has inbuilt a hidden philosophy that indoctrinates the users over time. The internet is inbuilt with the utterly destructive collegiate communist fantasy idea of “the utterly free exchange of information” that, surprise surprise, clearly included other people’s hard earned IP which they might make their living from. Also known as theft. Weird how giving people a way to steal other people’s work anonymously results in them stealing other people’s work anonymously.
One of the very first scaled out superevents online in the arts was the spread of the entire Bitstream Type library stolen, put on the web for free. Created an instant disaster in the typography world. And demonstrated that nobody had thought through a goddamn thing regarding “all information should be free!”
Point being, this is all too important to real lives, our collective cultural life (thus spiritual well being) to just shrug it all off and hope for the best. As per your sentiment of; “We can’t know. That is what I’ve argued. Could AI art turn out to be entirely Malthusian? Maybe.”
AFAIK, the only lawyers in the cultural space that understood and contested the issue seriously were from the printing industry. Which is why we still can’t read magazines from 1926 on Google:Books. Meanwhile Google:YouTube is utterly awash in a million hours worth of stolen-by-proxy songs and stolen-by-proxy movie clips which they make advertising blood money from. By the time “Don’t Be Evil” was dropped as their slogan in 2015, when they pulled off their innocent sheep’s costume as Alphabet Inc, it became more widely known that its addicted users were its products, and the arts were collateral damage. They put Napster (1999) to shame with their subtly encouraged mass theft.
We can go on for days about how inept governance and self-serving law has destroyed the arts. The Telecommunications Act of 1998 is particularly reviled; which collapsed the local radio station model. Which was the way that local bands in local scenes were “broken” by local DJs. Once enacted, mass mergers happened, authentic local stations disappeared, then bands started disappearing. Unique classic songs no longer get written. Small venues died. We no longer saw new movements with new ideas and sounds coming out of new scenes. The serial innovation of: folk, doowop, surf, Motown, Nashville sound, psychedelia, bubblegum, singer-songwriter, country rock, glam, funk, prog, punk, soul, new wave, hip hop, hair metal, paisley underground, grunge, punk pop… suddenly stopped. Replaced by corporate confections; hyperproduced hot girl singers and pretty-boy bands singing soulless formulaic frankensongs with massive marketing budgets. Those that signed that law were garbage human beings, sellouts, idiots, and philistines.
What we need, as David hinted out somewhere around here, is lawyers that understand the problem, sympathize with the victims of the various scalar cultural-technical crimes encouraged by self-absorbed utopian technologists, and are willing to ‘go to the mattresses’ solely for the love of humanity.
”It’s hard to imagine art getting any less valuable than it already is — completely free.”
Digital art is free. And digitized art is free. But there is still a real world out there. Which is not virtual. And is not a game.
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