A Short Musing on AI Art — Is There Meaning in Desecration?
On the very last day of 2023, what some called a new contender for the single worst tweet of the year made itself known — a person using AI to “complete” Keith Haring’s ‘Unfinished Painting’.
For those unfamiliar, the original painting was Haring’s final work before dying of complications from AIDS, and was left intentionally unfinished to represent the thousands of lives lost from the government’s cruel and complacent role in allowing the AIDS crisis to become such a destructive tragedy. So, this particular work of AI “art” is an evident and gross erasure of the penetrating and critical meaning of the original work. Right?
Well, yes. Obviously. The account is attempting to bait others into a state of outrage in order to get attention on the internet in a truly grotesque way, by erasing the original meaning which represented such extreme loss. And what I say in this article is in no means in praise of the altered image or the person who created it. But, sometimes, the destruction of a work of art can enhance the meaning of a work, or in itself bring new meaning. Regardless, I’m getting ahead of myself. First I have to answer the central question of this essay, before applying it to ‘Unfinished Painting’. Can we find meaning in desecration?
To answer this, I will first discuss a painting by someone other than Haring — Barnett Newman’s ‘Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue III’.
The third of the ‘Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue’ series, this iconic work of abstract expressionist art was partially intended as a provocative piece (hence the name), due to the popular outcry against the entire movement of abstract art at the time. Anti-abstract sentiment is still widely held today — I’m sure you’ve met people who would say “That’s not real art!” or, “Y’know, I could do that. It’s just three colours (or a banana taped to a wall, or a urinal with a signature, etc.)” However, as with all of the examples above, there is real artistry on display here, and we will return to that fact soon. The paintings were highly controversial, partially due to anti-semitism around the painter’s Jewish identity, but also due to the aforementioned hatred of abstract art. To many, the paintings were seemingly meaningless, substanceless, and lacking in any artistic skill, and therefore an affront to art as a concept. As a result of this, ‘Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III’ became one of the most famous desecrated paintings in history.
In 1986, while the painting was being displayed in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, a member of the public walked into the museum, and carved out around 50 feet of the canvas with a box cutter.
The restoration process was, frankly, a disaster. Nearly $400,000 went into it, and after it was completed, it received enormous criticism for failing to capture the original’s lack of definite brushstrokes and striking, complex colour. Critics claimed that the restorer had used a paint roller, and had laid a standard acrylic paint over the original oils that Newman had used, destroying its sheen and depth. They also claimed that he had broken some of the fundamental rules of restoration, such as ensuring that all restoration efforts are able to be reversed, and that the restoration must only affect the areas that require it. Some have said that the painting had been destroyed twice — first when slashed with the box cutter, and again during the restoration.
So, how does this double destruction grant new or enhanced meaning to the painting? Firstly, the initial damage proved that people were afraid of red, yellow and blue. It proved its own controversy, its own provocativeness, with its own desecration. After the attack, hundreds of people in Denmark sent letters to the museum supporting the attacker’s actions, showing just how widespread this absurd hostility was. As for the failed restoration, it disproved the claim that these works were not artistically complex — that the seemingly simplistic art, that “anyone could do!”, was, in fact, immensely difficult to replicate. The original paints had been hand-mixed, with enormous amounts of subtle detail within the (at first glance) monochromatic colours. The failed restoration brought another new, enhanced value to the painting — it became an embodiment, a definitive representation, of abstract art requiring artistic skill. The destruction of the art had proved and improved the art’s own meaning, twice over.
What does this all have to do with a random Twitter user using AI to “complete” Haring’s ‘Unfinished Painting’?
Again, we must take a slight detour to explain what makes Haring’s art unique, and discuss the meaning of his style. Haring always included definitive symbols within his art — people and objects that had meaning in their design, composition and relations on the canvas. His use of simple figures and iconography make his work instantly recognisable, but each of his apparently uncomplicated works holds within itself a great deal of symbolism. Take, for instance, one of his most famous yet also simplest works, ‘Radiant Baby’.
This pictorially uncomplex work, consisting of only three colours and a clear single subject, is laden with symbolic meaning. The iconography of the baby is historically associated with hope, innocence, wonder about the world, and the potential for new futures. It shines singularly out from the blue expanse (with blue, of course, being the colour most associated with sadness). The vibrant orange, which is directly across from blue in the colour wheel, not only contrasts the sadness present in the world of the canvas, but also complements it to show that the baby is not separate from the world, but a part of it. The symbol of hope and wonder, central, radiating within the great blue is a representation of the artist’s own hope for a better world, and his childlike creativity and wonder. The simple yet iconic imagery here is the very strength of the art, as the message would be less universal, less clear, less directly memorable with a fully realistic baby. Now, let us return to ‘Unfinished Painting’.
As I discussed at the beginning of this essay, the negative space, the very unfinishedness of this work, is the core of its meaning. You can see two clear figures in the filled in area, a joyful jumping one in the very top left, and a horizontal, seemingly defiant one at the bottom. These are both representations of the nature of being queer, which Haring was — the ecstasy of living your own life and expressing one’s love, and the resistance it takes to face a world which is so determined to repress queer lives. The former is full-bellied and round, while the other seems to have a kind of spine and ribcage, showing the comparative jolliness of the first and the required metaphorical “backbone” of the second. There is also a third, upside down figure on the right, whose head is incomplete. And yet, these are the only clearly identifiable symbols within the piece, with three quarters of the entire canvas essentially entirely empty, as the artist’s life ended at the age of just 31. The drips of paint could represent the trails of impact that the artist has left, despite his all-too-short life, but also intrudes so on the empty space that it emphasises it. Regardless of the meaning of the painted area, it is the emptiness that is most striking, the pure plain whiteness in contrast to the artist’s typical bold colours.
So what are we to make of the AI version?
To begin with, the most obvious issue is that the negative space has been erased. This intentional act destroys the very meaning of the artwork, the essential core of the whole thing. It no longer represents the primary thing it was meant to represent. Moreover, this desecration also removes the interpreted meaning of the aspects that were painted — what do these figures now represent, if the painting now no longer represents the tragedy of the AIDS crisis for queer people? By the painting no longer being about that, it ceases to be about queerness at all, especially since the “artistic role” has been shifted from Haring and his queer identity, to this Twitter user, whose queerness is unidentifiable from their account. Regardless of the poster’s potential queerness, their intent was never about enhancing the original meaning, but instead a sheer experiment in provocation.
What I find artistically interesting, however, are specific things that the AI has done to expand the work, and how they perfectly capture the problem of meaning within AI art. At first, it seems to consist of totally incomprehensible scribbles, a far cry from the definite shapes and figures in the original piece. The third, upside down figure that I briefly mentioned no longer has an incomplete head, but no head at all, proving that the poster has even erased parts of the original painted area rather than simply expanding it. The AI version also has no consistency with the thickness of the lines, or the spacing between the lines and the circles that make up the painted area of the original. These lines are also far shakier and sometimes fade, lacking the bold, clear, and pleasing definition of shape that that original had. It totally ignores these core aesthetic aspects of the original, which would be taken for granted by the average viewer, and it only becomes clear just how central they are not just to this piece, but Haring’s style as a whole, when they are absent.
Upon an even closer inspection, however, the seemingly meaningless squiggles are recognisable — they are largely distortions and bastardisations of the primary joyful figure in the top left.
See the stomach and legs of the first figure, and how it’s replicated three times in the bottom left of the extended version, stacked in a nonsensical way? This pattern is repeated across the entire page. The AI programme is incapable of recognising the iconography and incorporating it in meaningful ways. Furthermore, look at this small, insignificant squiggle beneath the leg of the joyful figure, and how it is replicated in the extended version:
Here, you can see an almost identical squiggle copied twice, right next to each other, located around the centre-bottom in the extended version. Similarly to the legs of the joyful figure, this squiggle reappears many times across the rest of the extension. These are just two examples of the copy-pasting present here — the longer you look at them side by side, the more you notice.
What do we take from this then? Why am I making this post at all, and why is it worth discussing beyond the obvious fact that it sucks? I believe that this piece of AI “art” perfectly shows how AI art is incapable of meaning and originality. Not only does the extended version erase all of the meaning of the original, but it fails to identify the core tenets of Haring’s work — the symbolic iconography of the person devolves into meaninglessness, squiggles and lines, the destruction and deconstruction of the literal personhood behind and within the piece itself. It is this exact destruction of meaning which I believe is so meaningful.
The art has been desecrated. This is undebatable. But via this desecration, it receives a new meaning, which is that the human artistic urge cannot be captured via machinery and code. That the inherent joy of living and the tragedy that lies within it, which is part of the core message of the joyful figure next to such blank expanse, fundamentally cannot be depicted by AI, and that as a result, AI art is essentially valueless.
However, there is another layer here which I believe is infinitely more interesting. A couple of times in the second half of this article, I have applied words that I used to describe the actual art I have discussed to also describe the AI extension, namely “provocation” and “seemingly meaningless”.
These words are intentionally chosen. Because I believe that in its own way, this is a work of art. But not in the same sense as Haring’s original is art. Instead, I mean it in the sense that it is an intentionally provocative visual work that is intended to create a response, in the same sense that ‘Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue’ did. Of course, it is not the same, in that the provocation is one that largely exists for attention, and it is a direct copy of another, far superior, far more meaningful work. But regardless of original intent, it creates a conversation around the meaning or lack of meaning within AI “art”, a conversation which I am contributing to, and, moreover, a conversation which is worth having, even though the correct stance on such a topic is to be against it. Through the desecration of a work of art, a debate over the ethics and inherent meaning of art is created, which is the exact purpose of art.
Bibliography:
