Are Michelangelos Still Needed?
Introduction
I recently came across a statement in an online comic known as Poorly Planned Comics by the late artist Jack Masters/Flimsy Parkins, while that is a can of worms in of itself, the statement isn’t an uncommon one and while this was some years before the AI boom we see today, it still rings true as a sentiment shared between a lot of people, not only artists. Today, we will be discussing whether artists are needed and seek to view the purpose of art through three different and distinct perspectives. Let’s begin by taking a look at that statement found in one of the comic strips.
"The sad and obvious truth of the matter is that art, once formalized or mechanized, is no longer art; and the few arts that have not been formalized are now being mechanized. There is no mystery or talent required to create 'artistic' beauty; and if a talentless person can do it, why should we give any regard to those who require talent to produce the same result? John may spend a week painting a tree, but Jane will take a photograph and then use a workshop to make the picture appear painted. There is no visual art created before the last century that modern technology would not have allowed a less talented person to make better and faster. Let us be realistic and assume this trend will continue. There is nothing we can do to avoid the solemn fact that Michelangelos are no longer needed."
This sentiment echoes across the world currently, especially with the rise of artificial intelligence and the development of digital tools to churn out visual art like a factory. To take a closer look at it, we first have to understand why we need art. The preposition proposed in this statement and many like it is that art only has visual or aesthetic value; that we create and enjoy art to have something pretty to look at. While undoubtedly this is a part of art and perhaps the tip of the iceberg, there is a lot more beneath the surface as to why we not only create art but also connect to it. Let’s begin by taking a closer look at why humans create art before we answer the question of whether or not we need Michelangelos.
Why We Create Art
The reason we create art is varied and a highly discussed topic, and something we seemingly can’t ever agree on. People make different art for different reasons. However, we can identify three main lenses through which to view the artistic process:
- Physical
- Mental
- Metaphysical
Which you personally identify with or believe art to be - is going to be depending on your personal ideology, philosophy and religion, all which make up your world-view. We’re going to be taking a closer look at each of these three and trying to understand a bit better some of the theories as to why we make art.
Physical
Viewed from the lens of evolutionary biology, art can be viewed and likened to the feathers of a peacock, where art is exhibited and created to showcase physical and mental prowess. The visual arts, the biologist argues, are a way to highlight the skill of an individual. Skills like creativity, dexterity and intelligence are all on display when we create and also consume art. Think high-brow art and the upper social hierarchies and their refined artistic tastes. Through this reasoning, we create art to find mates and to gain physical advantages over others among us. Art is a status symbol, and it can show others we’re intelligent, wealthy and in touch with our intimate and emotional sides.
Famously, in the Kama Sutra, there’s an extensive list of what qualities make a person attractive, and most of them are creative or artistic. Things like writing poetry, making art and having a knowledge of these subjects, along with other aesthetics, signify attractiveness and the quality of lovemaking from a person. It suggests that if a woman is looking for a suitable lover, she should look for an artist, a poet or some other kind of creative. In pop culture, we also have the phenomenon of groupies or dedicated fans, often young women who fanatically follow and worship the ground that famous musicians walk on. The promiscuity associated with rock’n’roll may be viewed favourably by some evolutionary biologists, but the idea of male-driven polyamory and promiscuity is often criticised by others.
I personally find the physical argument incredibly reductionist, and it assumes that art is only created for the desire of somebody else and it reduces life down to a single purpose of procreation and attracting a suitable mate, or that people have only made art for the physical and social advantages it can provide. It somewhat contradicts the idea of the struggling artist we often see as a trope in culture and media, and while artistry and creativity can be viewed as favorable, they can also be viewed quite negatively.
While some people create from this framework, and do it perhaps to attain wealth, fame, and attention, many artists are introverted and secluded, which brings this into question. Most artists I’ve met create for themselves. Most don’t even need to show their work to anyone else, and the ones who do usually do so out of necessity to make a living. Most creatives and people in general enjoy art for other reasons, and I think the argument completely disregards the complex nature of culture and the social sphere that humans live in. From this narrative, art can be valued both from its aesthetics and its intellectualism.
We especially see this intellectualism in people who wish to be seen as smart or view themselves as intelligent when they digest or create art. Here, aesthetics are often at odds with the intellect; enjoying a painting for its beauty is simple and evolutionarily primitive. The masses enjoy beautiful pictures and showing everyone how much smarter and intelligent I am. I only enjoy art which is abstract, offensive and takes a whole lot of brainpower to enjoy. My ponderings and conclusions of the artist’s work are monologues of self-love and verbose jargon highlighting my heightened understanding and relation to the master of the work.
The physical aspect of art then refers to the idea that we create and enjoy art for the sake of social advantages and benefits. This concept assumes entirely that life’s only purpose is procreation and that as a Freudian symptom of that, we, too, paint, write and create only to find a suitable partner. Here, the aesthetics are valued in showing that we have good taste, great skill and that we are compatible with and equal to beauty. However, the aesthetic value can also be diminished and play a smaller part in exchange for abstraction and intellectualism. Here, however, this intellectualism is often more about appearing intelligent than actual intelligence; it’s physical and thus surface leveled, meaning appearance is more important than the deep truth. While art can be enjoyed for the sake of appearing intellectual, there is also a mental facet through which we can enjoy and create art.
Mental
The mental perspective on art is a little bit broader and harder to pinpoint. It deals with ideology and ideals more than with the benefits of the individual. Here, art highlights the mental attitude and intellect of the human spirit, the dreams, goals and aspirations of not only the individual but also of the collective unconscious. An important distinction I want to make here is between feelings and emotions. We will be referring to emotions as mental while feelings as something more. The difference here is that the feeling arises in the body as a physical or mental symptom, while emotion is the reflection and observation of the feeling. The feeling of sadness is felt, both physically and mentally, but the emotion of sadness can be expressed, discussed and dissected through, e.g art. This is but one of the many examples where the metaphysical perspective and the mental one will overlap.
The mental view on art is that art is a way to pass and communicate ideas through either direct communication or through aphorisms and symbolism. We communicate life-advice, experiences and truths through art, and we use it to express the aspects of our lives which we find no words to express. Through this, when we connect with art, it’s with a mental understanding of what is being expressed: whether it’s an emotion or an idea, we relate to it in one form or another, and we do this not only as social creatures but also as intelligent creatures. Art is a tool and fundamental desire to understand ourselves and our world better, and we explore it not to gain material possessions or social fame, but to better understand our purpose in life, our feelings and our experiences as humans. This intellectualisation of human expression makes it political and ideological and what we give time and space to express our fundamental beliefs as people.
Propaganda, social and cultural ideals, and individualism all come together under this mental reasoning for art. It allows us to connect with other people and with groups, and it helps us find a place of belonging in the world, but it also allows us to explore our own consciousness and helps form us as individuals. It creates both forests and individual trees. The existence of art is of a mental faculty and of a social intellect that not only perceives the world around it but also itself; it’s an existential and self-awareness that seeks to express and explore the inner and outer workings of perception.
From this lens, humanity will always have a need to create and explore artistic creativity, not as a biological function but as an existential and intellectual one. This is a need that an artificial intelligence does not possess, nor can it replace the need for humans to go on this journey of self-exploration. While a machine can mimic and express ideas, it can only do so with the aid of the symbol-deducing mind of a consciousness akin to humans. Because these abstract concepts are not only understood by us but also directly experienced and felt.
Metaphysical
The third and last could also be called ‘spiritual’, but I’ve opted to use a different term for it because of the vagueness and ambiguity of the term ‘spiritual’. The metaphysical need for art is deeply rooted both physically and mentally in us, but it transcends both previous concepts in the sense that it ties everything together and connects us with something much bigger than ourselves. We will, for the sake of confusion and befuddlement, include feelings in this category. Because they can be both physical and mental, and they are experienced not through intellect nor body alone. This direct conscious experience of not only feelings but also of experiences that defy our conceived notions of thought and feelings gives way for the metaphysical way to view art.
This way of viewing the artistic process is very personal and varies more from person to person than the other two: when we talk about the physical and the mental, people generally agree on what is what and how the two are differentiated. However, when it comes to things beyond our perception, these two things tend to be more difficult to convey and grasp. Some would even argue that this third notion doesn’t even exist and that it’s a mere product of the mental aspect. That it’s abstraction and intellect gone awry with creativity and has deluded itself into some grandiose deception. Needless of what we think of it, a fact remains that its experience and practice is so widespread amongst humans that we can’t ignore it. Whether we call it superstition, religion or ritualism, these metaphysical practices and beliefs exist in every culture and amongst every group of people. Naturally, then, we have very different views and ideas on what this entails exactly, but a common denominator is the mystical experience. The connectivity to existence itself, not through thought and intellect but through direct feeling. Art then becomes a vessel to communicate not only ideas and ideals but to directly connect and experience the higher nature of life itself.
Art has served this and continues to serve this purpose in many ways, whether as a way to directly link and connect with divinity or to share and profess that love. All religions and all cultures have made art for a variety of reasons and still to this day use it to express fundamental truths about their beliefs or to directly connect with that consciousness. There’s an invisible bond between humans that links them together, and this bond has existed since we lived in caves seemingly infinitely apart. Art becomes a way to manifest and bring about good fortune, spiritual and physical health and to profess an undying love to existence itself. This is beyond the mere aesthetic or intellectual value - this is a direct experience where art becomes a portal translocating us to that state of consciousness. We can’t physically experience heaven in a church, and we can try to intellectually understand it by the art therein, but by connecting to the art through our hearts, we can feel that divine presence.
The drive that exists in most artists still isn’t clear to most artists, they just know they have a deep longing and not only desire to create but a need. It comes as naturally as breathing or eating, and this fundamental experience as a human to not only create but also digest and take in art in its many forms transcend the physical and the mental, it’s such a big part of us that we don’t even realise it and that’s why we trivialise it. That’s why we can reduce it down to physical and aesthetic value or why we can abstract it and strip it of everything that isn’t intellectually valuable. But neither fully and adequatly expresses the fundamental experience of artistic creativity, and I’m not even sure the religious and sanctified does either. Artistic expression does so much and is so interconnected to our lives that we can’t even begin to imagine where we would be without it. Imagine no writing, no imagery and no speech. All of these are not the cause of creativity but symptoms of it.
When the physical need for survival has been met, we go on to intellectualise and reflect on our surroundings and perhaps ponder about how to survive the next day, and when that thinking is done, it moves into the third and final phase: creativity and expression. It becomes manifesting not only the physical and mental needs but also to manifest the workings of our souls, and it brings to the surface this incredible depth that hides deep inside all of us. We breathe life into our surroundings, we bring previously unseen and inconceived colours and shapes into not only our own lives but the lives of others. This is a powerful tool of creation that can be used for both good and bad, and we should be careful with what we put out and what we consume - but can we stop creating, and can we be solely content consuming?
Do We Need Artists?
Do we need chefs when we have frozen meals? Jobs have been taken over by automation for as long as we have existed; despite this, the need for art hasn't gone away, and it never will. This assumes a mechanised and artificial need to both create and enjoy art. It's a simplified and materialistic understanding of dimensions that are both psychological and spiritual and almost entirely metaphysical in their nature.
Do we need Michelangelos? Perhaps not; it depends on the purpose of the art. We don't have a need for painters to make our autonomy books or to give us illustrations of nature, animals and so on. There are things, however, that aren't able to be perceived by soulless machines - these images can only be conjured up by artists. To paint a picture of the human soul is not something anyone but a living, soul-filled being can do. Machines can create self-portraits, but they can't write them; they can tell lies, but they can't relay the truth of an emotion. They can't empathise, perhaps feign sympathy, but they can't move and feel like we do. They can’t live life and experience it to its fullest as we do, and that’s something artists do.
Beyond just sitting in a chamber and capturing images of life around them, artists are living and autonomous beings whose inner lives are enriched by experiencing and interacting with the world. A work of art is unique to each individual, not only the creator but also to the ones who experience it. To relate and to understand it, we view it through our unique lens, and to create it, we form it and mold it from everything that makes us who we are. There are too many factors that go into that, things we can’t reduce down to mathematical formulas or strings of DNA, not even to thoughts and reflections on who we are. It’s a unique combination of all these physical, mental and metaphysical factors. It’s our feelings, emotions, experiences, ideas, thoughts, desires, dreams, wants, needs, and so much more. It makes for a soup which is delicate and nuanced, and each bowl we pour from our own being is different from the last, as there are new impressions, new thoughts and new experiences that reshape who we are, while at the very core, we remain consistently ourselves.
Art is something so human, and it’s so much more than a need or desire that is just overcome. It’s not a hunger where we just look at any painting and feel culturally fulfilled; it’s more than that and such an integral part of who we are as living beings, and it’s not something we want to trade away because it’s not a chore or a problem to overcome. We often navigate life through this lens of survival that everything has to be solved and that art is just another one of these things; like it’s something if we just figure out how to make it perfect, we don’t ever have to suffer from it again. No more creative blocks, no more artistic insecurity or creative droughts - if we just figure out how to distill it into the philosopher’s stoe, we won’t ever have to worry about creating again. Art creates purpose, joy, self-expression and exploration, and it brings about so many valuable and good things to us that I don’t think we will ever need to have it go away.
When we talk about artificial intelligence, we think of it as some perfect way to immediately create anything we desire, but art is so much more than that. For a lot of people, the process itself is valuable. If we want to find beauty, we can look around; the world is beautiful, but when we delve into art, it’s not only for the aesthetics, but it’s something deeper, something more fundamental. Would we stop eating if we could be fed the perfect nutrient meal? Would we stop hiking if we could fly up to the peaks above? Would we stop traveling if we could see the world through our screens? If the answer was yes to any of these questions, then maybe, Michelangelos are not needed.
Art is not about talent, it’s not about aesthetic or intellectual value. It’s not about being the best or making the perfect painting. It’s so much more than that, and the happy amateur to the jaded professional and even the layman knows as much, and A.I, or any other technological invention, will never stop people from creating art. It may change the methods and the financial landscape, but we will never stop being artists, and there will never stop being a need for art and its creators. We as people connect to so much more than the visuals of any given project, and it’s why outsider art and underground cultures continue to thrive. As long as people live, there will be Michelangelos and a need for them, if not to create life-like artistic imitation then to simply create.
While art may continue to be formalized, mechanized and maybe even automated, the mystery of the process will never cease; it’s the same force that birthed the galaxies that runs in its veins, and artistic beauty may be imitated well but the lives these artists live and touch will never be replaced by machines. Would we feel the same way we do about Van Gogh’s work if we didn’t know his story? Or would it be just another image lost amongst the countless we’ve seen?
The author of the comic where the first statement was taken is proof of this, and while Jack Masters is no longer with us, his work has continued to be cherished and admired to this day. You might not have believed it at the time, Jack, but more than ever, there is a need for Michelangelos. May you rest in peace.
