FACING UP TO 'AI'

 

There is a lot of disquiet about the pros and cons of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and, specifically among artists, about ‘AI-generated art’, including strident protests that even the use of such a term is totally abhorrent! 

   

I am more ambiguous on the topic: partly because I have seen some highly original and inventive AI-imagery and because I think that, for millennia, art has always been subject to the vagaries of frauds and fakers as well as those who have a taken a broad perspective on such identifications as ‘after…’, ‘inspired by…’ and ‘in the style of…’

 

This liberality of accreditation can be seen in the output from the 'workshops' of the Old Masters; among those creating art with collage and photo-montage; and in Andy Warhol’s screen-prints featuring a ‘borrowed’ publicity-image of Marilyn Monroe from the 1953 film, Niagara, or that humdrum household staple, the Campbell’s Soup Can.

 

However, even I balked at finding an internet entry on Lewis Carroll featuring an AI likeness of the author of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass alongside genuine, well-attested photographic images of the man.

 

 

Arguably, it is the best of a less-than-brilliant bunch of imaginings which range from the patently risible to the truly creepy... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, again, I tell myself, the National Portrait Gallery in London contains a variety of artworks variously portraying the well-known features of, say, her late majesty Queen Elizabeth II, so what the heck? Does it actually matter?

 

Perhaps, in the end, it just comes down to being able to identify, ‘What’s What and What’s Not’, between artefact and artifice.

 

**********

 

‘So [Alice] got up, and held out her hand. “Good-bye, till we meet again!” she said as cheerfully as she could.

 

‘“I shouldn't know you again if we did meet,” Humpty Dumpty replied in a discontented tone, giving her one of his fingers to shake: “you're so exactly like other people.”

 

‘“The face is what one goes by, generally,” Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone.

 

‘“That's just what I complain of,” said Humpty Dumpty. “Your face is the same as everybody has — the two eyes, so —” (marking their places in the air with his thumb) “nose in the middle, mouth under. It’s always the same. Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance — or the mouth at the top — that would be some help.”

 

‘“It wouldn't look nice,” Alice objected. But Humpty Dumpty only shut his eyes, and said “Wait till you've tried.”’

 

**********

 

But we’d probably better not start a conversation on Pablo Picasso…

PUMPKIN PANORAMA

 

Now that it's safe to go out into the pumpkin patch once more, I thought I'd share this forbidding piece of graphic art, Nico Delort, celebrating (if that's not an inappropriate word of so 'dark' an artwork) the Great Pumpkin!

 

 

Explore more of Nico Delort's amazing art HERE

THE WITCH-HUNTING SEASON

 

From 61-years-ago today: the cover of The New Yorker with Halloween-themed art by that irreverent spook-meister, the great Charles Addams (1912-1988).

NOVEMBER

 

 

No sun – no moon!
No morn – no noon –
No dawn – no dusk – no proper time of day –
No sky – no earthly view –
No distance looking blue –
No road – no street – no 't'other side the way' –
No end to any Row –
No indications where the Crescents go –
No top to any steeple –
No recognitions of familiar people –
No courtesies for showing 'em –
No knowing 'em –
No travelling at all – no locomotion,
No inkling of the way – no notion –
'No go' – by land or ocean –
No mail – no post –
No news from any foreign coast –
No Park – no Ring – no afternoon gentility –
No company – no nobility –
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member –
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,–
November! 

Thomas Hood (1799-1845)

MY FRIEND, MR MOUNDSHROUD...

 

Mr. Moundshroud, who are YOU?

 

And Mr. Moundshroud, way up there on the roof, sent his thoughts back: I think you know, boy, I think you know. 

 

Will we meet again, Mr. Moundshroud? 

 

Many years from now, yes, I’ll come for you.

 

And a last thought from Tom: O Mr. Moundshroud, will we EVER stop being afraid of nights and death?

 

And the thought returned: When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.

 

Tom listened, heard, and waved quietly. 

 

Mr. Moundshroud, far off, lifted his hand. 

 

Click. Tom’s front door went shut. 

 

His pumpkin-like-a-skull, on the vast Tree, sneezed and went dark.

 

The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury, 1972

 

 

[Illustration: 'Mr. Carapace Clavicle Moundshround' by Joseph 'Joe' Mugnaini (1912-1992)]

IT'S HALLOWEEN, LINUS!

  

I'm just saying – on behalf of a friend...

 

                                                                                           (c) Peanuts Worldwide LLC

A TRAIN OF THOUGHT

Today would have been the 104th birthday of legendary fantasy writer, Ray Bradbury, with whom I was fortunate to have a 38-year friendship from 1974 until his too-early death in 2012. Whenever I visited Ray at his home in Los Angeles, I always made a point of pausing in front of this oil painting hanging on his sitting-room wall. 

 

Entitled ‘The Carnival’, was painted in 1952 by Joseph ‘Joe' Mugnaini (1912-1992). Long before Ray was sufficiently established in his career to purchase the original canvas, he had spotted a lithograph of the picture in the window of a Beverly Hills gallery. 

 

‘The Carnival’ presents an enigmatic vision of a crowded, flag-and-banner-bedecked train which is either coming out of nowhere (bound for a destination equally unknown) or is, otherwise, reversing towards the abrupt and perilous end of both railroad-track and viaduct. For Ray, it seemed to chime with some of the bizarre and fantastical themes that he had explored in his 1947 debut collection of short stories, Dark Carnival.

 

The result was the first of many meetings between two men with minds wide open to the eloquent and extravagant possibilities of an unfettered imagination. For Joe, it was the beginning of his collaboration with Ray: illustrating, decorating or providing evocative jacket-art for a succession of books beginning, in 1953, with The Golden Apples of the Sun and including such story collections as The October Country, A Medicine for Melancholy, The Machineries of Joy and the novels, The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451 and The Halloween Tree.

 

Joe's carnival train also, unquestionably, contributed to the shaping of Ray's book Something Wicked This Way Comes in which Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show, with its entourage of monsters and misfits, arrives by locomotive, under the cover of night, in a sleepy American town to disrupt the fates and fortunes of the local residents and, in particular, the destinies of two young boys.

 

I'm sharing this haunting image today with grateful, affectionate memories of my many encounters and long years of correspondence with Uncle Ray and with respect and admiration for his creative collaboration with the talented Mr. Mugnaini.

"DOCTOR, WHO ARE YOU?"

Exciting news from the Whoniverse as Puffin publish the BBC book Doctor Who in Wonderland by Paul Magrs. A brilliant premise and excellent conceit: a new story in which the TARDIS deposits the Doctor in front of the gates to the Oxford university college, Christ Church, in what (in literary circles) would come to be regarded as a particularly notable year: 1862.

 

The Time Lord (to be specific, the Fifth Doctor, as portrayed by Peter Davidson) along with three of his companions from that era – Nyssa, Tegan and Turlough – are instantly swept into the milieu of Victorian Oxford where everything is going like a summer dream until, at a tea-party in the Deanery Garden, there’s a decidedly nightmarish twist… 

Paul Magrs skilfully and wittily interweaves many Whovian, Dodgsonian, Carrollian and Alician threads to create a memorable adventure that will be better enjoyed without ‘Spoilers’ from me. All that needs saying is that this excellent read is a loving tip-of-the-top-hat (‘In this style UK £9.99’) and, of course, a Panama Hat, to two great and enduring fantasy concepts, whose creative origins bridge a 100-year-span from 1862 to 1963.

 

Only one complaint from this reviewer: having read the book, it’s rather frustrating not being able to now reach for the DVD and watch this episode!

ONE MAN AND HIS DOG

I really enjoy sharing the work of artists who I've either long-admired or have only recently discovered.

This acrylic painting – 'Dog Day Afternoon' – is the work of self-taught Canadian, Steve Walker (1962-2012), whose work contains many hauntingly poignant images, invariably in a palette of muted colours, that often speak to unsettling combinations of joy and sorrow, loneliness and abandonment, hope and expectation, anticipation, frustration and disappointment and every other mood within the complex turmoil of human emotions...

As here, the features of Walker's subjects – invariable handsome young men, for he was a prolific chronicler of life, love and loss in the gay community – are often unrevealed: leaving us to interpret their body language and add whatever personal thoughts and feelings the settings bring to mind. Thus, the observer becomes, in a sense, a co-conspirator in the creation of the scene.

SUPER-ART

A classic piece of contemporary comic-book art: Adam Hughes' variant cover for DC's Superman #3 (published September 12, 2018). 

Simple, bold and dynamic: the urgent immediacy of Clark Kent's imminent transformation into Superman, the upturned gaze, the catastrophe of the moment reflected in his spectacles. 

Brilliant!