The Easel

12th March 2019

Transformative Sculpture

Matthew Barney gets high praise – among “the greatest [artists] of the last 50 years”. His work – video, “wonderous” sculpture, drawings – is undoubtedly influential. Skeptics persist, though, seeing his work as less than the sum of its parts. One reviewer thinks his current show a “visual dreamscape, both on the movie screen and in the gallery space [but] without legible intent.”

The AI – Art gold rush is here

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”.