"Allison Zuckerman was 27 and working in her cramped apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, when the mega-collectors Donald and Mera Rubell discovered her..."

"... buying more than 20 pieces. (She stashed dirty clothes under the bed before their visit.) Since 2021, her work has sold at auction 59 times, a remarkably high volume for a young artist. 'It feels very out of body,' Zuckerman said of watching auctions. 'Everything that went into that painting — the discoveries, resolving that one corner, that brushstroke that really brought the whole thing together — isn’t what’s being talked about.' While Zuckerman said most of her paintings sold at a solo exhibition in June for $35,000 to $65,000, she couldn’t ignore the auction debacle for 'Woman With Her Pet' that same month: Someone tagged her in an Instagram post about the 91 percent price drop while she was on her honeymoon.... Today, she’s making a new body of work about losing control of her paintings in the market. 'Reclaiming it is the only way I can have a sense of agency,' she said."

From "Young Artists Rode a $712 Million Boom. Then Came the Bust. Artists saw six-figure sales and heard promises of stardom. But with the calamitous downturn in the art market, many collectors bolted — and prices plummeted" (NYT).

"Woman With Her Pet" sold for $212,500, then, 3 years later, brought only $20,160. 

You can see a lot of Allison Zuckerman paintings — including "Woman With Her Pet" — here.

I thought it would be funny if — instead of embedding an image of Zuckerman's "Woman With Her Pet" — I got Grok to produce something like that. Grok was TERRIBLE at this task. Here are my prompts, each of which produced — as you can tell from my tone — a frustratingly bad image:

1. "Make a painting in a crazy colorful style based on Picasso that shows a view of a woman seated with a little dog on her lap."

2. "The woman should be facing forward, her face and hair and clothes should be broken up in a chaotic way, and the dog should not be cute or realistic at all."

3. "No no no. This is far too realistic. I want cubism, and I want absolutely no conventional or cute beauty in the woman or the dog. Think Picasso!"

4. "The woman and the dog should be ugly in a disturbing and chaotic way that challenges the viewer and does not bring any serenity or calm or interest in having a sexual relationship."

5. "No. You are still relying on conventional beauty but just making the woman seem to have a challenging demeanor. I need the painting to be challenging and you must make the painting painterly, not suggestive of realistic 3D space."

6. "Eradicate everything photographic and destroy all interest in feminine and canine beauty. Make it look forthrightly like a painting, something that has the thickness of a layer of paint."

Scroll down for the responses to prompts 1 through 5. The response to 6 was: "Something went wrong while responding to your request."

I responded: "I take that as a concession that you cannot provide an image consistent with my prompts," and Grok admitted that "when it comes to painting a picture that's as chaotic as a Picasso on a bad day, I'm afraid I'm more of a verbal artist than a visual one." 

Yeah, you know, even though I have hundreds of my own paintings and drawings around the house, I too am more of a verbal artist than a visual one, I'm afraid.

Here are prompts 1 though 5 and the Grok response: