The above quote is by Matthew Arnold who was an English poet, and even though he said it sometime during his lifetime, 1822-1888, I feel that with the rise of AI it points out that an artist’s work comes from inside, a feeling, a thought, a way to say something without words. A program, no matter how evolved it is, the work it produces feels static: it doesn’t move the viewer in the same way as a piece created by a living, breathing, artist. You don’t get a peek inside the artist’s head, see their truth. To sit, just sit in a museum and feel the paintings and the silence, the presence of the artists whose work surrounds you and takes you out of the everyday grind, and you find refuge.
More on this later but it’s something I’ve been thinking about.