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).
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:
पोस्ट्स
५८ टिप्पण्या:
Maybe Grok would've understood better if you'd used the word "cartoonish"
"Maybe Grok would've understood better if you'd used the word "cartoonish""
I can't even understand that. What would be more likely to get it to stop doing that thing I wanted it not to do — to say be MORE cartoonish or LESS cartoonish?
oh, I thought the problem was Grok kept giving you almost photographic female faces instead of unrealistic ones like the kind in cartoons and posters. Or abstract art.
Yeah. I hear that Hunter's paintings aren't selling so hot these days either.
Haha grok can't do it? Humanity FTW.
I'd pay money to see the baby that results from Allison Zuckerman and Alain Delon's sperm.
Grok seems to default to white people, models, and cleavage.
Basically Elon's taste.
Her art dropped in value because it's sh*t art. Can any of you imagine hanging any of that drek in their own home? There is little to no beauty in that art.
Money laundering needs less extra steps nowadays
What you are doing is called "cruising parameter space". You change your entire prompt each time, so you can't really tell what caused any particular change. Try just repeating the original prompt, with one word changed. Take out "crazy", for example. Although I have to say, the first one is the best. Nice rack!
"oh, I thought the problem was Grok kept giving you almost photographic female faces instead of unrealistic ones like the kind in cartoons and posters."
Grok is giving me stuff that is simultaneously photographic and cartoonish. I would describe its style as like highly *filtered* photographs — filtered for conventional beauty. It's like Instagram. You begin with a photograph but you process it. I think the results are very much like the way women are drawn in superhero cartoons.
Compare Zuckerman's "Woman With Her Pet": https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Woman-with-her-Pet/FB0CD13E7ABFEEB084AF30C65DE02E6D
I was trying to get something at that level of distortion of reality.
"You change your entire prompt each time, so you can't really tell what caused any particular change"
You can tell by Grok's caption that it is understanding my prompts as refinements that refer back to the preceding prompts. I'm giving it credit for getting that far and would be bored by starting over each time. I don't believe that is called for at this stage of Grok.
I guess AI isn't going to put artists out of business.
A sculptor friend told me that for a gallery showing, the artist gets only 50% of the sale price. True? And what about the auctions?
"Her art dropped in value because it's sh*t art. Can any of you imagine hanging any of that drek in their own home? There is little to no beauty in that art."
Yeah, don't hang it in your "home," but if you have another sort of space and "home" isn't your prime concept, it might be just the thing.
Wow.. I hate all her paintings... She's kinda cute, however.
I'm wondering if it's probably not even a good tax write-off. Are you limited to deducting losses on collectibles only against gains on other collectibles?
Zuckerman's work looks digital, even though it sounds like she paints with oil.
When prompting Grok, try referencing an actual actor. "Show me Tracey Ullman holding Spuds McKenzie in a cubist style." I've noticed in AI fake trailers (which I love) the men look vaguely like specific actors, but the women always look like the same generic English rose. I don't know why, but it's frustrating that the default woman is so bland.
I like how they show the back of the canvas. I remember trying to explain Lichtenstein’s Stretcher Frame to my girlfriend. I gave up…
The only thing about Picasso that Grok seems to know is that he was a Cubist. So it puts a colorful patchwork of rectangles behind an otherwise fairly normal-looking woman and calls it Picasso-like. Oy.
Ann Althouse said...
I was trying to get something at that level of distortion of reality.
You should have used Dali as the example instead of Picasso.
I don't understand why specifying "Picasso" didn't get you most of the way there. Picasso has a very easily copied portrait style of imposing a profile on a front facing face.
Gotta love noses.
Why didn't my comment post? Let's try again.
When art becomes an investment market, the prices of art behave accordingly. See Tom Wolfe's 2008 book, "The painted word."
Grok sure does like cute dogs and women with inviting busoms.
I think Paddy O got it right. Money laundering.
Also seems like Grok has Mila Kunis on the brain. NTTAWWT.
Ask for a woman and Grok interprets that as a beautiful bosomy woman.
Maybe Colin Kappernick’s new start-up AI company would do better. Sarc/off
Well probably because the overwhelming majority of internet hits for "woman" are from men looking for "hot" women. Grok defaults to what the internet tells him is the most popular.
Ha--i just realized that I assumed Grok is "male."
I was not familiar with Allison Zuckerman until now. Thank you, Ann, for the introduction. I appreciate Allison Zuckerman's work as she integrates various elements of art history and culture into her own artistic expression.
You can't blame the artist for the fact that you paid 10 times what the painting would fetch at resale. Someone needs to paint a representation of caveat emptor.
While I find her paintings visually impressive, the range seems to be awful narrow in that selection from Mutualart. Would like to see more, however.
Who doesn't?
Yeah, his art's value seem to fall off a cliff at the end of July. It is a mystery we will never solve, it appears.
I had a comment that got dropped, to the effect that Grok interprets things according to what the internet tells [it]. My guess is that the overwhelming majority of internet hits for 'woman" are from guys looking at "hot" women. Hence the bias.
"Make me a picture of an ugly woman."
"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that."
Heehee--I'm on Grok's side. There's enough ugliness in the world without creating more. And I'd rather look at these than a Picasso.
I think you should have used the words 'highly abstract and surreal, in the style of Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali'
Probably about the same. Galleries and auction houses are selling the artists their customer lists and it isn't particularly easy for any artist to be able to do that on their own.
I can't feel bad about the artists making it, then having the market drop on them. Life.
I have to confess, I thought Allison's work to be interesting. Not pleasing, but interesting. In kind of a kitschy way. Probably not the way she intended it. But it doesn't turn me away. I would, in fact, love to see an exhibit of it all. But I don't love it enough to hang on my wall. And most certainly would not spend $185,000 for art that does not, at the very least, please me. Not sure I'd spend $100 on something that didn't please me. Though I did once trade a classic Eames table for a painting that I don't even like, but my wife does. (The things we do).
There is a TON of artistic, creative talent out there. For the very few who do get noticed and find a marketplace for their work, enjoy it while it lasts. Most never get a taste of it, and many are far more talented than you.
At least somebody did something about price-gouging in the art market.
There is something about her art that has an AI vibe to it. Perhaps it has something to do with the saturated color palette. I can see why it might be interesting to try to get an AI to create similar designs.
Wow, the newer Dall-E 3 image creator in Bing is decidedly worse than it used to be. It used to generate quite decent cubist stuff, but now it's really lame. A little more 'progress' with this stuff and artists will really have nothing to worry about.
grok; "remember how in olden movies, the kidnappers would make their ransom note out of cut out pieces of magazine print?
make a work of "art" the same way"
I can't do that Dave.. It'd look Really crappy
I'll try again. I like "Tea Time," but suspect it's a mediocre piece of art.
On second thought, maybe Grok did exactly what you asked. You asked for an ugly, unrealistic woman, and in these days of "body positivity" any woman with a BMI under 50 must be called unrealistic and ugly. You're just not keeping up with current standards.
Zuckerman's paintings are quite good, with an exuberance you don't often see in cubism.
You can see that the AI doesn't really "get" the request for a particular style. All of the examples it shows are variations on what you might call the house style.
Her art dropped in value because it's sh*t art. Can any of you imagine hanging any of that drek in their own home? There is little to no beauty in that art.
I have an art collector friend who would be thrilled.
Your mental picture of art is "Looks pleasant, and doesn't distract from the furniture." But for a collector, it's their hobby. They *like* talking about it.
Sorry, none of that is art, and never will be art. I have no sympathy for anyone who wasted the money purchasing it.
Sucks for speculators, but Trending includes Ending.
All her women sorta look the same. Too cheap to get models?
There's what could be a man in ONE, so shouldn't you have asked for a cat instead of dog?
Her work should be on the Mutalart website (not affiliated with commenter Muta-man).
Her Mutalart collection kinda reminds me of what the world looked like to someone 30 minutes after taking hallucinogens in the late 60's.
“ You should have used Dali as the example instead of Picasso”
No. Dali is not what I was trying to get. Dali has surrealistic ideas rendered in a realistic traditional style.
Many text-to-image AIs don’t process negative prompts (“no conventional beauty”) in the way you might expect, and you might unintentionally emphasize the unwanted qualities. I used the Midjourney platform, gave it the original artwork as an example, cranked up the “weird” parameter (—weird 1000) and some other stuff, and came up with
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/995101915761360998/1274918062449098802/46630448-1e88-463a-8fe3-239634513e4f_grid_0.webp?ex=66c3ff78&is=66c2adf8&hm=4631cd96bf63d4e3953065dd6e9da466e21dbf87539ca20b6a548bb6b24adae9&
Not exactly right, of course, but I like that the “pet” is indicated by just the curl of a tail and there is no obvious cleavage.
This might be a higher resolution version:
https://cdn.midjourney.com/46630448-1e88-463a-8fe3-239634513e4f/0_0.jpeg
Perhaps you should have asked Grok to create a painting of a woman and dog in the style of an aspiring 27 year old woman living in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn
The collectors of the nineteenth (and early 20th) century bought works that they themselves liked. They had a good art sense, and their purchases appreciated in value. Today’s collectors attempt to buy works that they believe other people will like (so the works will appreciate in value).
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