When Duchamp put a urinal in a gallery in 1917, the art world called it genius. It doesn't matter what the object is, they said. What matters is the intention of the artist.
When Warhol silkscreened a Campbell's soup can, same argument. He didn't design it. He pointed at something that already existed and said "this is art now." The galleries agreed. The collectors agreed. For a century, the ready-made was canon.
Craft didn't matter. The hand didn't matter. Only the intention.
Now someone types a prompt into an AI, and suddenly the hand matters again. Suddenly we care about where the material came from. Suddenly craft is sacred.
The same cabal that spent a hundred years telling us a urinal is art now wants to gatekeep what counts as creation. They don't get to change the rules because the technology made their philosophy uncomfortable.
I never had sympathies for the ready-made. I thought removing craft from art was a mistake. But at least I was consistent.
They weren't. And that tells you everything about what they were actually protecting.
It was never about art. Ask yourself what it was about, and the answer writes itself.
#AI #Art #Branding
When Warhol silkscreened a Campbell's soup can, same argument. He didn't design it. He pointed at something that already existed and said "this is art now." The galleries agreed. The collectors agreed. For a century, the ready-made was canon.
Craft didn't matter. The hand didn't matter. Only the intention.
Now someone types a prompt into an AI, and suddenly the hand matters again. Suddenly we care about where the material came from. Suddenly craft is sacred.
The same cabal that spent a hundred years telling us a urinal is art now wants to gatekeep what counts as creation. They don't get to change the rules because the technology made their philosophy uncomfortable.
I never had sympathies for the ready-made. I thought removing craft from art was a mistake. But at least I was consistent.
They weren't. And that tells you everything about what they were actually protecting.
It was never about art. Ask yourself what it was about, and the answer writes itself.
#AI #Art #Branding
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