Window on Main Street: Art versus artificial reaches new level

Here’s mine: What is art and what qualifies it as art? Does simply saying something is art make it so? “I know nothing about art, but I know what I like,” the old saying goes. But is that measure enough?

Same for artists. A painter friend from long ago would argue that inside every person there was an artist screaming to get out, and the attempt to make a work of art was evidence enough. What about ability and talent?

Is this like saying we can all be heart surgeons if we’d just try, the difference being bad art may be repellant, but it never killed anyone.

“I could draw that,” one person says, pointing to a simple line drawing by Picasso, to which the second person says, “Yeah, but you didn’t, he did, and it’s not as easy as it looks.”

Like politics and religion, folks are intractable when it comes to their beliefs about art, and to discuss it is a losing game.

Then there is the Valley Art Center and a recent news release announcing a panel discussion on the making of art digitally through use of artificial intelligence. “The process of new understanding” is the stated goal of the panel – at 7 p.m. Feb. 10 in VAC’s Patron’s Gallery – which accompanies its exhibit “Rendering: A Digital Discourse.”

There will be a question-and-answer period, which could be interesting and lively should someone ask, “Is artificial intelligence and digitally created images really art? Are the products of this new medium created by artists or a technologist?”

The idea of computerized, electronic, artificial anything is a new spin on the “What is art?” question and cannot help but test our open mindedness on the question. Heck! Some purists among us are still debating whether photography should be considered an artform.

So-called “pop art” figure Andy Warhol was ahead of his time and may have gone unnoticed had he not invented his “Factory” studio back in 1963 at the dawn of our no-holds-barred cultural revolution. His “soup can” paintings sold for millions of dollars. It is not a stretch to imagine Andy Warhol would approve of art generated through artificial intelligence technology.

Michaelangelo was an innovator before elevating himself to the top of the Sistine Chapel, literally. He invented the scaffold to reach the ceiling where he would create the masterwork. He could not have known there would be such a thing as “technology,” but we wonder if he would approve of it as a way to make art?

VAC Executive Director Bec Gruss said the art center’s “intention is not to take a stand on AI or conclude on its relevance or place in the arts community but rather to open a dialogue ...”

Good luck with that, Bec. This could raise the spirits of some of VAC’s late and legendary artists like Bob Takatch, Florian Lawton, Darlene Jackson and Lois Toole, who once debated whether it was “purist” enough to refer to photos of their subjects while making a painting versus painting the subject in real time and space.