Art, AI, Deception and the "Originality" Question

One of the local shops here in our small seaside city is featuring a rotating selection of original art on their walls in support of local artists.

This has long been a practice in our town because it draws a large number of tourists and the downtown core in particular features art on many walls, mostly in response to the fact that a great many of our resident art galleries have gone out of business during and following COVID.

In many ways, I'm very happy to be out of the art gallery business!

SO what's wrong with this picture? Generally, I see two things happening here:

For starters, much of the so-called "original" art isn't original at all. When I was looking at some of these pictures I thought there was something vaguely familiar about them and then I realized that they were actually digitally manipulated copies of fairly well known works from a particular fantasy genre, recolored somewhat and then printed out on high quality art paper and signed by the ostensible "artist."

At one of these local venues, I actually came across people's finished coloring pages, presented as original art.

I guess that takes the old fashioned paint-by-numbers concept to a whole new level!

I'll hasten to say I have no particular issue with these particular processes, and it's a fine way to decorate your summer cottage, but we are perhaps stretching the truth a little bit by presenting it as "original art."

What I have a problem with is what feels very much like an obvious form of deception, offering people work in the guise of something it quite clearly is not. It might not surprise me on a sketchy website... but in a high visibility public space?

Which brings me to another issue I have with the situation, which is to some degree based on a couple of conversations with people who have art spaces.

And that's the issue of the fallout from our modern day societal fondness for entitlement and inclusiveness. It's one thing that people are taking their coloring pages, and perhaps doing a nice job with them, but then insisting that they are being "discriminated against" if they're not allowed to hang them up as "original art" next to the work of somebody who has spent 30 years mastering their skill as a painter kind of turns the whole thing into a farce, at least in my book.

Should you be allowed to hang your coloring pages in an art space if the owner of the gallery space thinks it's OK?

Absolutely! As long as there is truth in labeling and people are told exactly what they're looking at. And maybe that's where my problem stems from: there is almost invariably a level of deception here with all this copyism and AI art .

As I said, I am glad I'm not in the gallery business in this post COVID era. I know a lot of people were very bored during the long time of lockdowns and not being able to go out, and they took up new hobbies and pastimes which I have absolutely no issue with.

It's only the attempted deception — or what feels like attempted deception — that I have an issue with, particularly from the standpoint of being someone who has been creating original work for decades.

I'm not going to belabor the point further, but something here feels a little "off center."

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great Friday!

How about you? What's your opinion about "original" are, and whether it has importance in our modern world? Do you think the practices I have mentioned here are a but dishonest or sketchy? Or do they sound OK? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2024.08.09 01:34PDT
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