What is art?

Abstraction

This was in my instagram feed. Apart from loving her work her words here really struck me. In many ways she expresses beautifully what I was struggling to say is missing in AI art. I don't want to start another AI discussion here but just share her profound thought. My last few paintings have been closer to 'realism' but they are still very much me. The idea that our paintings are a mirror of something inside us, a reflection of us, is beautiful and true.

tassieguy

I like the idea that our paintings are us, or a reflection of us, but in a different form to what we see in the mirror.

I agree that making art is about feelings.  Feelings are what make us want to paint. I'd find it hard to imagine wanting to paint anything unless something about the subject invoked feelings in me that I wanted to express so that others will feel something of what I feel. So, to your question, what is art? I'd answer that art is an unspoken three-way conversation one has with the subject, the work of art itself, and the viewer. The artwork is the medium through which the conversation takes place.

I'm not sure that AIs can "want" or "feel" anything. What this means for AI generated art I'm not sure. And I wonder why, if AIs have no feelings, some of the images they generate invoke feelings in me. Maybe it's the human artistic input that went into creating the AI's data base. It learned to create images by looking at images created by human artists and the AI images are imbued with some of the artists' feeling.

But that's just a thought that I won't pursue since you want the thread to focus on the ideas expressed by the lady from your Instagram feed, which, I agree, are beautifully expressed.

adridri

I like the idea of art being a mirror of ourselves. I find sometimes difficult to rationalize what is being mirrored though. .

Abstraction

adridri said:

I like the idea of art being a mirror of ourselves. I find sometimes difficult to rationalize what is being mirrored though. .

True, but I don't think it makes any difference whether we can explain it. It still reflects us - how well it captures what we felt depends on how far our skill has developed.

@tassieguy I love your idea of the three-way conversation.

Someone once asked a famous ballet dancer (I think it was Anna Pavlova) what was the meaning of her dance. She looked blankly at the interviewer and then said words to the effects of, well let me dance it again for you. Something reaches deep beneath our rational world into things we struggle to articulate and so we express it in a different way. For her the dance itself, 'was the medium through which the conversation takes place'.

whunt

Art, in all its forms, sensually connects us with our psychological selves, imagine what life would feel like without Art. I think we are still in the early parts of our evolution in truly understanding these things.