Emma Kanne Professor Moulon History of AMT 12 December 2020

Art, Technology, and the Human Condition

The human condition can be defined by the knowledge of death, a paradoxical nature, and a symbolic identity that brings him or her sharply out of nature itself— and into civilization. At the forefront of civilization we find the experience, appreciation, and need for art as a primal symbolic system. So it comes as no surprise that my first day in Paris was spent at the Louvre.

Lost and unsure which wing to take on, I surrendered to the only signs I recognized: the Mona Lisa. Moments later I was no longer following the directional signs, but the crowd of other scurrying tourists on a mission to see it themselves. After several missed turns, I finally turned the corner to the maze of retractable line dividers before me. In line I could get an occasional glimpse of the painting, but only for a few seconds before another raised phone would try to violently capture their experience for facebook. The line slowly inched closer as people would rotate in and out, but the closer I got the closer I grew to disappointment. When it was finally my turn to approach the renowned work and experience the overwhelming shared admiration of many- I felt nothing but more disappointment. Was I alone in this discontent, or did society put so much weight on a painting that no work would ever have the capability of carrying? Seeing the Mona Lisa was seeing a circus performance that chanted “we really are something special in creation.” What I saw that day was a desperate need to justify ourselves as something greater than human.

Every known culture appears to contribute to this circus with their museums, bidding wars, creation, and possession of art. The world distribution of art recommends itself that art has origins in something common to humankind, something bred in the bone, so to speak (Carroll, 4). In its broadest form, art may be considered an exploration of the human condition, or a product of the human experience. This commonality is frequently argued in arts relation to the human condition, while the artists relation to their own condition is rarely considered. So what does it mean for the artist who is actively exploring this condition instead of the passerby observing it?

Society romanticizes the artist, and thinks of her as selfless, as one who doesn't submit to the same earthly urges as Caesar. But what we so rarely talk about is the artist's likeness to Caesar himself. According to philosopher Ernest Becker “If you are an artist you fashion a peculiar gift, the justification of your own heroic identity and the need to earn your immortality on the basis of your unique artistic qualities” (Becker, 220). To be an artist is to live beyond your years in and their through your work. That is a lot of weight for a brush stroke, click of a camera, or carved material to carry.

Jota Castro greatly communicated this achievement of immortality within the art world in “Motherfuckers never die;” where he used two light boxes to display a list of curators, gallery owners, and collectors names. To perfectly add to Castro’s suggestions, a bidding war took place shortly after—orchestrated by the mentioned collectors in his work. Motherfuckers never die has been said to flawlessly summarize the art world and has often been compared to film credits,displaying all the people involved in a production. Although, he notably left out the greatest contributor of this production: the artist—the most immortal of all.

While religion promises its followers immortality in heaven, art promises its artist’s immortality on the wall space of museums. Both deny our human condition and both are an attempt to transcend our death in symbolic ways. Art is not only a transcendence of death, but it is also a reflex to the terror of it. This terror can be seen well in Damien Hirst’s $100 million diamond skull that cost $23.6 million to make. If Hirst’s “For the Love of God” is one thing: it would be controversial. Critics, such as Jonathan Jones, claim that “the most honest work of art of the first decade of this century was obviously Hirst's diamond death's head” (Jones, 2). While, on the other hand, critics such as Nick Cohen believe that Mr. Hirst “isn’t criticizing the excess, not even ironically, but rolling in it and loving it. The sooner he goes out of fashion, the
better” (Riding,1).

Other critics see the diamonds as a rejection against humanities creatureliness and a literal effort to cover over our own rotting decay. The eternal diamonds will forever mock the skulls yellowing teeth and laugh at our false victory and inability to outlast them. Art is one of the greatest immortality projects of all and in the words of Damien Hirst himself “I don’t see what else you can spend your money on. If you want to own things, art is a pretty good bet. Buy art, build a museum, put your name on it, let people in for free. That’s as close as you can get to immortality.”

As evident, critics and museum goers can all formulate an opinion on how a work relates back to the human condition—either vaguely or directly, but what does it mean when an artist titles their work The Human Condition? Rene Magritte painted multiple sceneries in 1933 titled “The Human Condition” where he hid the scene beyond the easel with a painting of that exact scene —making it impossible to know whether it was an accurate depiction of what is behind it, or whether perhaps it displays an idealized scene (The Human Condition, 1). This work forces the viewer to come to a new understanding of their own capabilities of reflection. Contemplating the image itself, its reality, and contemplating
your own contemplation; Magritte successfully evokes a sense of discomfort within the mind as one considers the meaning of The Human Condition and how this title could relate back to the layers of meaning painted onto the canvas. Art is always a reflection, a rejection, an acceptance, an exaggeration, or a denial of our human condition, and art can never be separated from it -as art is distinctly human.

But what if art was not distinctly human? If the alternative presented itself would we judge the art work differently? An artificially-intelligent robot named Ai-Da is the first artist of its kind to host a sold out solo exhibition. The exhibition was titled “Unsecured Futures” and consisted of drawing, paintings, and sculptures that deal with the dystopian potential of humanities relationship with technology (Rea, 2). The robot was created by British inventor Aidan Meller along with scientists at Oxford who wrote the code and bestowed Ai-Da with cameras in its eyes and artificial intelligence algorithms, which in turn direct coordinates that allow Da’s arm to draw. Unsecured Futures brought in more than $1 million in sales, although the shows tremendous success only poses further questions. Some questions include, if in reality Ai-Da’s work is only the result of humans writing and dictating code, who should be credited for the work and marketed around its image: the Ai-Da or its engineer?

No matter how successful Ai-Da’s show turned out to be, many people still feel as though robots will never be able to produce truly creative work. For a work to be creative, it must be innovative which represents a challenge for computers, since they are just responding and translating human written code (Haynes, 3). Ai has a long way to go before it can come close to making work of Picasso’s and Bacon’s creative caliber, but in the meantime we can still question our own condition and projects in relation to Ai-Da’s.

Society praises the artist because he lives forever. O’Keeffe, Bacon, and da Vinci will certainly live as long as civilization does, but it is important to note they are only alive because we choose to keep them so. The human condition is a constant battle, especially for the artist whose lifetime consists of constantly reflecting on ones condition, trying to justify oneself in society and attempting to transcend death through ones creative work. In the words of Ernest Becker “All mans creative life ways, in are in some basic part of them a fabricated protest against natural reality, a denial of the truth of the human condition, and an attempt to forget the pathetic creature man really is.”

Works Cited
Carroll, Noël. “Art and Human Nature.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 62, no.

2, 2004, pp. 95–107. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1559194. Accessed 12 Dec. 2020. Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. Free Press, 1973.

Riding, Alan. “Alas, Poor Art Market: A Multimillion-Dollar Head Case.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 13 June 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/arts/design/ 13skul.html.

Jones, Jonathan. Damien Hirst's Skull Tasteless? That's the Point | Jonathan Jones. The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 22 Feb. 2011, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/ jonathanjonesblog/2011/feb/22/damien-hirst-diamond-skull.

The Human Condition. The Human Condition by Rene Magritte, 2019, www.rene-magritte.com/ human-condition/.

Rea, Naomi.A Gallery Has Sold More Than $1 Million in Art Made by an Android, But Collectors Are Buying Into a Sexist Fantasy. Artnet News, 11 Oct. 2019, news.artnet.com/opinion/artificial-intelligence-robot-artist-ai-da-1566580.

Haynes, Suyin. A New Robot Questions How Creative AI and Machines Can Be. Time, Time, 17 June 2019, time.com/5607191/robot-artist-ai-da-artificial-intelligence-creativity/.