September 5, 2022

Can AI Art Replace Artists?

As someone who appreciates art, the prospect of robots taking over the creative process worries me.

What it would imply for the field of art is something I find myself pondering.

What would happen if AI developed works that were on par with, if not superior to, human efforts?

Artificial intelligence (AI) software and hardware for creating pictures and other works of art has changed the creative process for artists of all stripes.

However, it has also inspired a range of responses, with some arguing that AI art generators are an attempt to supplant human imagination.

All About Hitler Masturbating by Salvador Dali

All About Hitler Masturbating by Salvador Dali

The self-parody implied by the title and subject matter is consistent with the late time of Dali’s life in which the artwork was created.

While most of Dali’s works are oil on canvas, Hitler Masturbating is a watercolour.

The informality of the medium suggests a quicker production time than for most of Dali’s oeuvre. It’s a break from the careful photorealism of Dali’s other works, which tend toward a kind of artificial automatism.

All About Hitler Masturbating by Salvador Dali

The landscape has a more impressionistic feel due to the looser brushwork. As the name of the painting implies, it depicts a scene in which a dictator dressed in full Nazi regalia sits in an armchair with his back to the observer in the midst of a desolate snowscape.

All About The Great Masturbator by Salvador Dali

All About The Great Masturbator by Salvador Dali

In his autobiographical work The Great Masturbator (1929), the artist explores his own sexual obsessions, worries, and fears. The painting’s focal point is a big amorphous shape that is a deformed self-portrait of the artist: Dali represents himself with his eyes closed and a large grasshopper placed on his mouth. Some of Dali’s other works, such as his masterpiece The Persistence of Memory, also feature self-portraits that are quite similar to this one (1931).