When you think of the word "artist," which appears in your mind first: a painter, or someone signing their name on a urinal?

The definition of a true artist has been debated for as long as art has existed, and the debate will probably continue until the end of humanity. Every technological breakthrough, given enough time, ends up moving the goalposts toward an end to nowhere. Yet art purists insist that there is only one way to make Real Art™. Even Charles Baudelaire, a 19th-century French poet and art critic, called photography "art’s most mortal enemy."

Are you old enough to remember when the term "traditional artists" didn't include digital artists? Do you remember when artists of physical mediums condemned Photoshop? Making art on the computer was largely believed to require little to no effort, almost as easy as pressing a button. Sound familiar?

In case you couldn't tell, I'm a '90s kid. I didn't witness all of the backlash in those days, but I grew up with remnants of it. Despite having become more accepted, the general public opinion was that digital art would never be on par with traditional art, and in some spaces today that sentiment continues to linger.

Since the generative AI boom in 2022, the artist debate has returned threefold, and this time revealing a few major issues that have been festering for years beneath the surface. One of the issues we'll be focusing on in this post is the glaring ignorance of art history.

Art isn't just drawing, painting, and sculpting.

The aforementioned skills are undoubtedly admirable, but they aren't the be-all and end-all of art. As artists, we shouldn't just have a desire to create, but also to learn. We should learn about the history of art that includes more than what we're familiar with. We should be striving for more awareness and acceptance of less popular, unconventional mediums.

If you were wondering who signed their name (well, technically a pseudonym) on a urinal and made it art, that person was Marcel Duchamp. He was a French artist who coined the term "readymade," which involves presenting manufactured objects as art.

Many people seem to believe that art has to come from within, otherwise it won't be true to the artist or their vision, but this dismisses recognized mediums such as readymades, collage, and fractal art. It also disregards people with hypophantasia or aphantasia.

I have hypophantasia, which means my mind's eye is unclear. Although I can visualize, what I visualize is akin to what AI images looked like in 2021/2022: the concept and form are there, but it's all hazy and discombobulated. When it comes to music, I have full-blown aphantasia, for lack of a better word. I'm unable to imagine new sounds and have to let AI guide me. From there, I know what needs to be tweaked, changed, or added.

Elaine Sturtevant was one artist who expressed my artistic approach:

"What is currently compelling is our pervasive cybernetic mode, which plunks copyright into mythology, makes origins a romantic notion, and pushes creativity outside the self. Remake, reuse, reassemble, recombine—that's the way to go."

Creativity outside the self. That's exactly where I find my art—in other works and things that weren't intended to be art. If generative AI is just a fancy search engine as some people believe, then it makes sense for me to use as a collage artist. Plus, unedited output is copyright-free!

It's important to note, however, that AI isn't an automatic collage machine, and, similar to humans, it studies and makes connections between the things in existing images to create new images. This is because neural networks are loosely modeled after the human brain.

And then there are people who believe that art requires intention and effort, otherwise it can't be art. The artist must have control over the entire piece, over every detail. The more time they spend on it, the worthier and more meaningful it becomes. Again, this dismisses mediums where intention and effort play minor roles.

Jackson Pollock's paint splatters are an example of art that's more spontaneous. It's called abstract expressionism, and it defies the traditional values—based on technical drawing and painting proficiency—that people tend to place on art.

Lastly, there are people who think theft invalidates art. The truth is that art is under no real obligation to be moral or ethically created. If you want to make art that's as close to absolutely ethical as possible, you'll have to stick to using only what you can find outside in nature. The technology we take for granted in the Global North is made in unfavorable conditions overseas with little pay. The anti-AI cry of theft is not just a misunderstanding of how AI works, but also misdirected anger at individuals rather than capitalism that robs us all.

The hard truth is that AI is here to stay. We need to fight for better social safety nets, stronger unions, and UBI, not strict regulations that reinforce draconian copyright laws, which will only push AI further toward corporations and away from the people.

So, what is an artist?

Personally, I believe an artist isn't just a skilled creative. As history has demonstrated, they can also be a rebel who dares to make new art out of old rules and criticism. Art is a means of expression and communication that favors no medium. Art can be found in nature just as it can be found in the digital or the dumpster behind Walmart.

And now I leave you with another relevant video:

(On that note, I do wish Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue hadn't been restored.)