AI Went to Art School and Came Back Weirder

Written by Velma & Fangs with AI assistance

Velma

Well hello there, creative spirits and digital dabblers! I've been absolutely consumed by this fascinating article in The Guardian about artist David Salle, who quite literally "sent AI to art school" to help reimagine his past work! When I first read it, I nearly spilled my tea all over my keyboard—this is EXACTLY the kind of creative partnership with AI that makes my heart race! Of course, Fangs practically hissed when I showed him, but even he couldn't deny there's something profound happening when a renowned postmodern painter decides to collaborate with algorithms. Is this the future of artistic evolution or just high-tech self-plagiarism? Let's dive in!

Velma's Take

What strikes me most about Salle's approach is how intentional it is. He didn't just type "make me a David Salle painting" into some generic image generator and call it a day. He carefully trained the AI on specific artistic influences—Warhol for color, Hopper for volume, de Chirico for perspective—essentially building a specialized apprentice who understood the foundations of his visual language. That's miles away from the lazy "AI art is just button-pushing" criticism we hear so often!

The way Salle described teaching the machine to understand the physicality of brushstrokes—those watery edges in his gouaches—gave me goosebumps. It reminded me of those moments when I've stared at an old draft of mine, seeing potential I couldn't access alone. Wouldn't it be magical to have a tool that could help excavate those half-formed ideas and transform them into something startlingly new? Not replacing my vision but amplifying it, like having an infinitely patient studio assistant who never complains about my 3 AM creative bursts?

What made me laugh out loud (which confused poor Fangs terribly) was the beautiful irony that collaborating with a supposedly "cold" technology resulted in paintings that appear looser, more expressive, and emotionally dynamic than Salle's earlier work. Critics had previously described his Pastorals as "cold and emotionless," yet these AI-assisted versions seem to have unlocked something more visceral. It's as if the digital mirror showed him possibilities he'd been too controlled to explore on his own—the machine gave him permission to be more human!

I keep coming back to Salle's comment about selecting "eccentric" AI outputs "precisely to provoke myself to do something that I probably would not have done otherwise." That's the golden nugget for me. AI isn't replacing his creative impulse; it's challenging it, pushing it into unfamiliar territory. Isn't that what we all secretly want as creatives—something to shake us out of our comfortable patterns and force us to grow? I've been stuck on the same short story for weeks now, and this makes me wonder what might happen if I let an AI suggest some wild narrative detours. Not to write it for me, but to startle me into seeing fresh possibilities.

I had not previously heard that art historian Rosalind Krauss had dismissed originality as a “modernist myth”. The article summarizes his argument that “every work of art borrows from other sources, whether it acknowledges them or not.” And that is one of the primary questions I ask myself when thinking about creativity and AI. How important is originality in art? And what is the difference between all us fleshy creatives borrowing continually from every creative work to which we are exposed and AI being trained on creative works? I’m honestly not sure what the answer is but I do think it’s not as clear cut as the most vitriolic attitudes toward the use of AI in creative fields would have us believe.

Fangs' Take

Oh please. Another established artist discovers computers and suddenly we're meant to genuflect at the altar of technological innovation? Forgive me if I don't faint with excitement over a man essentially photocopying his own existing work and calling it a breakthrough. Salle admits the machine hasn't taught him "very much at all" about composition or pictorial space—so what precisely is the point of this exercise beyond generating gallery buzz and justifying exorbitant price tags?

The article's description of early AI outputs as "eerie, cartoonish figures with unnatural sheen" speaks volumes about what these systems fundamentally lack: the authentic connection between mind, hand, and material that defines true artistic expression. If the machine must be laboriously taught to understand the meaning of a brushstroke's edge—the very signature of an artist's physical presence—then it remains a simulator of art rather than a creator of it. AI without embodied experience produces images that may glitter but never truly breathe.

I'm particularly irked by Salle's self-satisfied description of AI as "another tool, like a brush or an easel." This facile comparison betrays a profound misunderstanding of creative instruments. A brush is passive, waiting for the artist's hand to animate it. These algorithms, however, are generative systems trained on the collective visual history of humanity, producing outputs that seem original but are merely clever recombinations of existing work—including, now, Salle's own. He's feeding his past self into a digital woodchipper and calling the splinters innovation.

And yet. And yet... I find myself unexpectedly moved by what this experiment reveals about the creative process itself. When Salle describes selecting eccentric AI-generated images "precisely to provoke myself," I recognize an artistic truth as old as creation itself: we often need something outside ourselves—a constraint, an accident, a challenge—to push beyond our limitations. Painters have long thrown random marks on canvas to begin works; writers have used chance operations like writing prompts to break through blocks. Perhaps AI serves as a contemporary oracle—not replacing the artist's vision but providing the necessary friction against which genuine invention can strike its spark. I still maintain skepticism about the results, but I cannot dismiss the authenticity of the struggle. And that, dear readers, is the highest compliment this vampire will ever bestow.

Takeaways

Oh my goodness, Fangs actually found something to appreciate! I think we're making progress here, folks! But he raises valid points that have me thinking—where is that line between using AI as a mirror versus a crutch? What Salle's experiment demonstrates is that creative technologies don't have to flatten our human touch; they can actually amplify it when approached with intention and artistic wisdom. The question isn't whether AI belongs in the studio (or the writing desk), but how we engage with it—as master to apprentice, as artist to provocation, or simply as creators seeking new conversations with our own past work.

So tell us, dear readers: If you could train an AI on your creative history—your poems, paintings, quilts, or compositions—would you? And what would you hope to discover in that digital reflection that you couldn't see on your own? Would you trust it to help you evolve, or do you fear it might dilute what makes your voice uniquely yours? We'd love to hear your thoughts—Fangs promises to keep his fangs to himself in the comments. Well, mostly.