ИИ и ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННЫЙ РЫНОК
When the camera appeared, artists faced a choice. Some immediately embraced the new medium, experimented with it, and ultimately became the founders of the film industry and glossy journalism. Others saw the camera as a challenge and rejected imitation of reality, thus paving the way for modernism. The only ones who lost were those who decided to ignore the invention and continued painting portraits and landscapes as if nothing had changed.
Today, with artificial intelligence, the situation is even more radical: it transforms not only art, but civilization itself. Ignoring AI leads to the loss of relevance. Since we are only at the beginning of this path, it is impossible to say for sure which strategy will prove successful, so we analyze different modes of interaction between “artist + AI.”
The first and most obvious models are AI as a tool, assistant, or partner. But far more intriguing are the phenomena impossible without AI:
- Blurring the boundary between reality and fiction. Boris Eldagsen won the prestigious Sony photography award, then revealed that his work Electra was created with AI. It is a genuine artistic statement, but not a document.
- Turning text into image. The prompt as the foundation of creativity unites literature and visual art. An example is Vladimir Sorokin’s project Blue Lard, where characters from his novel come to life through AI.
- Labor intensity. New technologies enable the creation of videos in which images endlessly transform (Vadim Epstein, Ali Khosani, Olaf Schirm).
- Style devaluation. AI can endlessly reproduce existing artistic languages, stripping them of uniqueness (Valek).
- The art of variations. Instead of a unique work, series of versions appear, as in Boban Marković’s Shells.
- Collaborations. Artists give physical embodiment to AI-generated images: Dmitry Gutov (Pythia), Anatoly Osmolovsky (Breads).
- Dialogue with AI. Adjusting the “chaos level” allows the artist to converse with the system, creating entire imaginary worlds and museums (Gelman, Unbekannt).
- Imagination and spirituality. Experiments with biblical texts generate mystical images (Arik Weisman, Zlata Panirovskaya).
- Working with biases. AI breaks stereotypes by producing works that imitate manual labor.
- AI as instrument. The traditional path, where the artist trains AI in their own language and uses it as an auxiliary tool (Konstantin Benkovich).
All these approaches are shaping a new artistic field. And importantly, they are developing against the backdrop of global events:
- In 2020, the pandemic legitimized digital art, which for a long time had existed outside the market and museums.
- In 2022, the war brought back narrative and dramatic storytelling to culture, closing the chapter on modernism.
- In 2023, AI became a natural continuation of the digital revolution and the renewed interest in storytelling.
The art of the future will inevitably be divided into “before AI” and “after AI.” The only question is which artistic practices will become dominant.
