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Steven Pinker talks about art in one of his books. I believe it’s in “How the Mind Works” he splits art in to two rough categories: “Museum Art” and “Motel Art

Steven Pinker talks about art in one of his books. I believe it’s in “How the Mind Works” he splits art in to two rough categories: “Museum Art” and “Motel Art”. Motel Art might be a picture of a flower or a field. Museum art is things like Picasso and Rembrandt - what can be in a museum changes over time. E.g, if I paint a Picasso that would be passable in a motel, but not a museum. Picasso has been done. Doing it again is not museum art. That is, motel art is pretty to look at. Museum art is culturally and historically defined. A less favorable interpretation is that museum art is an intellectual pissing contest, where curators and visitors can measure their dicks by how much they know about the art history that lead up to this work or how much that work challenges status quo. Making pretty motel art is a solved problem. Making museum art, the prettiness or the craftsmanship has for a long time been largely been irrelevant. It might help form the story around the piece, but it is the story around the piece that is important. That story may be ruined by the revelation that a given piece is produced by AI or it may be the center piece of the story that propels a piece into art history. We have already seen childrens paintings and monkeys paintings win museum curators favor. We’ve also seen toilets and feces been placed in museums and art history. I don’t see anything here changing.

carewell 4y ago
Art has no absolute value by itself. Curators and buyers give it value. So if curators will decide that some motel art or some AI art has value - we will see it displayed in a museum. Of course there are exceptions but this covers the vast majority of art pieces.
- stavros 4y ago
  Everyone gives things value. I don't need a museum curator to tell me I like a particular piece, even if it's motel art. If enough people like some motel art, does that not give it value? Nothing has absolute value by itself, not even gold. If there weren't people to want gold, it wouldn't be worth something by itself. Value is a people thing.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  And money laundering
  - frozencell 4y ago
    Some big accusation of nowhere. Do you have a bunch of recent examples?
    - paulryanrogers 4y ago
      Money launderers buy art, and contribute to price signaling. Arguably inflating art, whether human or AI generated. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/19/arts/design/money-laundering-art-market.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/19/arts/design/money-launder...
GaryPalmer 4y ago
It's just the natural progression of anything really. Nobody would argue that you shouldn't drive a car because modern machines were used to build it. This kind of art will be inflationary and that's the end of it - the skill required is getting outsourced to machines. What it means to be an artist will be defined by how you use these new creative tools.
_puk 4y ago
Which museum is the first documented piece of AI art held in?
- anon7725 4y ago
  I don’t know who the first was but the digital artist Refik Anadol has pieces in a current exhibit at MoMA: https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/658 https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/658 The model was trained on pieces from MoMA’s collection.
anon7725 4y ago
There is a lot of art that doesn’t fit into that categorization: underground, street and outsider art have all existed in limbo before being processed by the museum and the motel.
FollowingTheDao 4y ago
Are you saying that the artists in that contest made "Motel Art"? "Motel Art" just took $300 from an artist who is naturally creative and talented and who might have went on to become the next Van Gogh.
harimau777 4y ago
What bothers me is the lack of middle ground. Art that is aesthetically compelling but also has meaning. It feels like most of what I see is meaningless "motel art" or unaesthetic museum art (think of the artists who do things like bolting a urinal to a wall or abstract art that's basically a blank canvas with some lines). I'm not saying that there isn't a place for avant garde art. I just think that the art community has lost its way in focusing on it almost exclusively.
zyx321 4y ago
Art is in how people interact with the work. Bliss.jpg was originally motel art. It was a stock photo of a random pretty place, and that's what Microsoft bought it as. The success of XP made it popular motel art. Finally, years later, people managed to track down the original location of the photo and found the rolling meadows replaced by vineyards. That in my mind is the moment when bliss.jpg became 'real' art.
isitmadeofglass 4y ago
> Motel Art might be a picture of a flower or a field. > Museum art is things like Picasso and Rembrandt I dont know Pinker, but I think he might be pulling the readers leg there. Either that or he just doesn’t know the subject he’s commenting on. Flowers by Picasso: https://images.app.goo.gl/U6gZiidQfQpcbFjSA https://images.app.goo.gl/U6gZiidQfQpcbFjSA and a field by Rembrandt: https://images.app.goo.gl/qXEpg3urfPokFzQj6 https://images.app.goo.gl/qXEpg3urfPokFzQj6

carewell 4y ago

Art has no absolute value by itself. Curators and buyers give it value. So if curators will decide that some motel art or some AI art has value - we will see it displayed in a museum. Of course there are exceptions but this covers the vast majority of art pieces.

stavros 4y ago
Everyone gives things value. I don't need a museum curator to tell me I like a particular piece, even if it's motel art. If enough people like some motel art, does that not give it value? Nothing has absolute value by itself, not even gold. If there weren't people to want gold, it wouldn't be worth something by itself. Value is a people thing.
paulryanrogers 4y ago
And money laundering
- frozencell 4y ago
  Some big accusation of nowhere. Do you have a bunch of recent examples?
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    Money launderers buy art, and contribute to price signaling. Arguably inflating art, whether human or AI generated. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/19/arts/design/money-laundering-art-market.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/19/arts/design/money-launder...

GaryPalmer 4y ago

It's just the natural progression of anything really. Nobody would argue that you shouldn't drive a car because modern machines were used to build it. This kind of art will be inflationary and that's the end of it - the skill required is getting outsourced to machines. What it means to be an artist will be defined by how you use these new creative tools.

_puk 4y ago

Which museum is the first documented piece of AI art held in?

anon7725 4y ago
I don’t know who the first was but the digital artist Refik Anadol has pieces in a current exhibit at MoMA: https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/658 https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/658 The model was trained on pieces from MoMA’s collection.

anon7725 4y ago

There is a lot of art that doesn’t fit into that categorization: underground, street and outsider art have all existed in limbo before being processed by the museum and the motel.

FollowingTheDao 4y ago

Are you saying that the artists in that contest made "Motel Art"? "Motel Art" just took $300 from an artist who is naturally creative and talented and who might have went on to become the next Van Gogh.

harimau777 4y ago

What bothers me is the lack of middle ground. Art that is aesthetically compelling but also has meaning. It feels like most of what I see is meaningless "motel art" or unaesthetic museum art (think of the artists who do things like bolting a urinal to a wall or abstract art that's basically a blank canvas with some lines). I'm not saying that there isn't a place for avant garde art. I just think that the art community has lost its way in focusing on it almost exclusively.

zyx321 4y ago

Art is in how people interact with the work. Bliss.jpg was originally motel art. It was a stock photo of a random pretty place, and that's what Microsoft bought it as. The success of XP made it popular motel art. Finally, years later, people managed to track down the original location of the photo and found the rolling meadows replaced by vineyards. That in my mind is the moment when bliss.jpg became 'real' art.

isitmadeofglass 4y ago

> Motel Art might be a picture of a flower or a field. > Museum art is things like Picasso and Rembrandt I dont know Pinker, but I think he might be pulling the readers leg there. Either that or he just doesn’t know the subject he’s commenting on. Flowers by Picasso: https://images.app.goo.gl/U6gZiidQfQpcbFjSA https://images.app.goo.gl/U6gZiidQfQpcbFjSA and a field by Rembrandt: https://images.app.goo.gl/qXEpg3urfPokFzQj6 https://images.app.goo.gl/qXEpg3urfPokFzQj6