MICROSTORY OF ART

MICROSTORY OF ART
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Dedicated to Artificial Intelligence and Picasso

(Picture: Grandville)

Picasso and Artificial Intelligence

(11.5.2023) In 2023, we need more brainstorming sessions as to the cultural implications of artificial intelligence (AI), and this due to a watershed having been reached: humans creating texts, images, or music, can now be and, in fact, already are assisted by AI tools to do so, and: humans in general are now being confronted with the products of people using AI assistance, in creating texts, images and music.
AI is having a history, and a 1956 brainstorming session, the so-called Dartmouth workshop, is often considered being an important mark in the history of artificial intelligence (at least: as a field of research). What I am proposing here, is a thought experiment. What if, I am asking, what if Pablo Picasso had been available all the tools in 1956, all the tools that we have available in 2023 (fifty years after his death in 1973). What would he have done? Respectively: what would he have done with it?
The year of 1956 is a year in the biography of Picasso I am really familiar with, and my thought experiment aims at clarifying the possibilities an artist may have, the choices an artist may face, in view of artificial intelligence. In 2023.

1) Prompting

The year 1956 was the year of Picasso’s 75th birthday (in October), and it is plausible to imagine that he would have had younger people to explain to him what AI was, and what the tools could do now, respectively: at the moment (tools that were, we assume, already fed with everything Picasso had created up to that date, at least with everything that had been made available to these tools; and I have to add: we have 2023 now, fifty years after the artists death, and Picasso’s works are not out of copyright, as, for example, works by Grandville are; see the example above). I am imagining that Picasso would have picked Édourd Pignon, a painter who was part of his inner circle, to enlighten him as to the new possibilities, and perhaps he would have also encouraged Pignon to do a few things with these tools, right on the spot. But in fact Pignon was not always around, in 1956, due to a trip to Poland he did in the summer. But let’s say: Pignon was the man who prompted what the AI in the basement of villa La Californie would do. And Pignon was prompting the tools right on the spot, to create some pictures in the style of…
Basically Picasso, in our scenario, would have had three possibilities. He would have had to chose either a) to go on as an artist, as if nothing had happened, as if AI did not exist; or b) to integrate AI in some way into his activity as an artist, or c) to wholly reinvent himself as an artist, in view of what AI could do now. Which would be more than just integrating new tools into what he did anyway. Possibility c would mean to redefine what an artist could or should do, in view of AI.
I imagine that Picasso, playful as he was, would have started just with finding out what AI could do and how good it did what it did, and this in a playful way, and not without his characteristic sense of humour (which could be a bit cruel at times).

2) Prompting a Portrait of Brigitte Bardot (in the style of Picasso)

Pablo Picasso was not a man who had plenty of time. This goes without saying, since, up to his death Picasso honored his talents. Which means: Picasso respected the talents he had, and with a sort of Protestant work ethic. In other words: Picasso saw working as the purpose of his life, and the more fame he was ›enjoying‹, the more problematic had become the management of his time. The year of 1956, was, if being superficially looked at, a quiet year which Picasso almost entirely spent at home at Cannes. There certainly was time to do some experiments with new AI tools. But the year of 1956 was also, due to some events on the world stage, and due to the inner repercussions of these events in the mind of Picasso, a very nervous year. It was the year of Khrushchev’s ›Secret Speech‹, revealing some of Stalin’s crimes, and it was the year of the Hungarian Uprising in the wake of the ›Secret Speech‹ and de-Stalinization (which caused also a crisis in Poland).

In view of the countless visitors Picasso had, and in view of the countless favors he did to people, asking him for a favor, I am imagining, dependent of the date Picasso was confronted with AI for the very first time, he would have been tempted to ask Pignon to have AI do a few things that would have facilitated the management of his time: as for example prompting the machine: do me a painting in the style of Pablo Picasso of…, or do me a drawing in the style of Pablo Picasso of…

And then there was Brigitte Bardot. Brigitte Bardot paid a visit to Picasso in the spring of 1956. Perhaps she imagined also that, perhaps, Picasso would paint her. I, on my part, am imagining that Picasso felt that Brigitte Bardot imagined that he would paint her (or at least the people around her), and that, in the evening, he told Pignon to prompt the artificial intelligence TO DO A PAINTING OF BRIGITTE BARDOT IN THE STYLE OF PABLO PICASSO. And I am imagining that he, and also Pignon, would have discovered that it was much fun, just to play around with the new tool (which seemed to know what he had done in the past).

One has to say here that, in 1956, Picasso had just established the life with a new companion, Jacqueline Roque, whom he was to marry in 1961, and if, for marketing purposes, one had arranged that Brigitte Bardot paid a visit to him, this did not mean that this vist was particularly important in any way. In reality it did not result in anything, nor art, nor a particularly interesting encounter in itself. But an image was created. Picasso meeting with Brigitte Bardot. But I am imagining now that Picasso would have had the idea just to play around with just that image, while finding out that AI could deliver him any portrait of Brigitte Bardot in the style of himself (or any other master). And now he would have begun to think about possibilities b and c. What did this mean? Had the status of the artist changed, right here on the spot, in view of the new possibilities? Or were there just new tools to facilitate what he did anyway? For example doing series of the Painter-and-Model-motif (of which he did countless versions)?

In 1956, thus, Picasso would have begun to explore what an artist could do with, and/or: in view of the new possibilities. If an artist felt that art was just about formal invention and discovery, the AI tool would certainly be of help to do countless variations of Painter-and-Model pictures. And I imagine that Picasso would soon have discovered that it was fun to prompt the machine to do that in his own style, or in that of Matisse or any other master, friend or fiend.

For the moment, and given his wish (in my scenario) to actually do a portrait of Brigitte Bardot, he would have discovered that he could do that with the help of the machine or without, but perhaps he would also have discovered that it was simply interesting to work with what the AI suggested to him, simply reworking it, and the result would have been something created by Picasso, assisted by a machine, which was, as we have to remember, fed with what Picasso had done already in his career, and before.

Would he have drawn the consequence to reinvent himself entirely as an artist? Not for the moment, I don’t think so. In 1956 he painted, among other things, views of his studio. With the new companion in his life, Jacqueline Roque, in it. Her role was manyfolded. Among other things she watched over what was happening in the house. How would a machine, who was drawing on what had happened in his life in the past, been able to be of help with that? Yes, the machine would have been able to give some impulses, but if the aim was to reflect what was happening in his actual life, and to find expression for that, Picasso could do that with or without the help of a machine. If however the aim was defined differently, Picasso might have reached a point to say: we have reached a cultural watershed, and it is now the artist’s duty to find out what humans relations with artificial intelligences are. Perhaps he would have continued as a painter, just doing that; but perhaps reflection would have led him to say: the artist has to reflect on that in/with other media, using all media, and using the public stage to show what the consequences of AI existence were.

3) Better This Than Doing Nothing

In view of AI the art of pottery might appear to be a bit outdated, but it is not. Picasso was drawn to it, just because it was elementary and had to do with the elements of the earth, the water, and the fire. And in 1956, at least in my scenario, it could be seen as a statement to say: no, I just work with my hands, and not with a computer, and this is a statement AGAINST DIGITALIZATION of everything.
But pottery, in the context of the nervous year of 1956, had various connotations. In the wake of the aforementioned inner repercussions of what was happening on the world stage, Picasso, in the fall, felt emptied. But the activity of pottery, among other things, kept him going, with Picasso saying to Jean Cocteau that he liked to do this more than just to do nothing. It was activity per se, working with clay. And it is interesting if AI could be seen as an alternative to clay here, and I tend to think that, yes, AI could be seen as an alternative, but the effect of working with AI is not soothing as that of working with clay. On the contrary, the effect of working with digital tools tend rather to enhance inner tensions, especially if the AI image tool suggests things to you that come from what you did yourself in the past. It does feed you, in the case of Picasso, with yourself, which can’t be healthy (you become a sort of self eater in the style of Dana Schutz).
I find it fascinating to imagine Picasso prompting an AI tool in 1956 to do a painting of Khrushshev giving the ›Secret Speech‹, and in the style of Picasso. There is no such painting by Picasso, and there is no painting of Picasso either that openly addresses the inner repercussions of the ›Secret Speech‹ and the revelations on Stalin in his mind. Why not? It is a void. Picasso was not painting everything (although he used to say so). There are many things he did not paint, and there must have been reasons for that. And one might imagine that AI could fill such gaps. If superficially being looked at – yes, one could prompt AI to do a portrait of Khrushchev in the style of Picasso. But to what purpose? And this seems to be the key question. It is the question of why doing something that decides over what will be happening in the future, with AI in art, or in art, in view of AI. Does AI yet have an own WHY? Certainly not. It is still a human WHY (not necessarily an existential WHY), that prompts AI to do anything. And usually artists have an existential WHY for doing anything. Which is the reason I still prefer to speak of assistance of human intelligence, also in art, and not of actual artificial intelligence in its own right. It is not yet intelligence, if intelligence (or plausibility) is being simulated. But also simulation can help with many things, it can assist. And this is the cultural watershed we are facing, even if AI does not know or not yet have an own existential WHY for doing anything.

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