An interesting and at times hyperventilating piece. Are AI images art? Probably yes. It’s a big step, though, to fretting that AI might “dominate” aesthetic trends. AI uses existing works to create a software ‘recipe’ for a given genre, such as portraiture. Novel (and lucrative) this art may be, but it isn’t inspired by new ideas. No-one is talking about a “shock of the new”.
Hofmann taught a who’s who of 20th century American artists. That distinction overshadows his reputation as an artist, despite his leading role in New York abstract expressionism. Perhaps teaching provided the gestation period for his late career achievement, ‘colour plane abstractions’. They are “the pinnacle of American academic abstraction … a world of floating forms”.
A neuroscience perspective on responding to art. Our biggest response is to faces, “the most important visual image we ever encounter”. We process images, not like a camera but as “an act of assembly with numerous brain areas contributing”. This assemblage is highly individual: “something special in the art [sets] off the physiological triggers of attraction and love. And so we say, ‘What a great painting.””