Bosch

AI Has Its Place But It Ain’t Above My Mantle

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The other day on Facebook, every septuagenarian’s favorite social media platform, I posted this confession:

“I’ve just come to the terrible realization that I’m a professional dilettante!”

I meant the quip, of course, to be humorous given the oxymoronic pairing of professional, denoting lucrative compensation for someone who can claim to be an expert, and dilettante, which describes a poser, an amateur who dabbles in the arts.[1]

A few kind responders begged to differ, claiming that I was the real deal, which I appreciate, but don’t buy, especially when it comes to what I have come to call my “fake paintings,” which are essentially photocollages filtered to look like paintings and printed on canvases. Not that they’re not eye-catching in a good way. My friend the painter and filmmaker David Boatwright ­ — the antithesis of a dilletante — finds them amusing.[2] So even though I call them “fake,” I do think they qualify as “art,” but it’s amateur art. When in a groove, I can crank one out in a couple of hours.[3] David, on the other hand, toils over his canvases and murals for months, not ceasing until every last miniscule detail is right.

Which brings me to the central subject of these ramblings — AI generated illustrations. 

A while back a Facebook friend lamented that AI-generated “art” was going to put people like me out of business, but I begged to differ. “AI hasn’t listened to Tom Waits while smoking Thai sticks,” I responded. It can’t, by its very essence, be original. It ain’t got soul. 

Last night my wife Caroline and I were looking at my two latest canvases, and I said, “There’s no way AI could come up with either one of these.”

“Let’s do a little experiment and see what AI comes up with,” she said. 

So we did, prompting the software to create something similar. 

Before we begin the comparison, I’ll explain briefly how I go about making a fake painting. 

I start with a high resolution photograph. In my latest (see below) TGIF Chico Feo, I took a photo of the bar area when I was the only customer in the establishment. 

I upload the photograph to Photoshop and add an artistic filter, in this case, the “Dry Brush” filter.

Almost always, I have no preconceived notions about what I’m looking to create. In this case, I googled “pulp cover paperbacks bar scenes” and scored the couple kissing from a novel entitled Divorce. Of course, the man wasn’t leaning over a bar to kiss his lover, but I determined I might be able to cut the couple out and paste them into the photo, and, damn, it worked. Next, I found the woman sitting to the couple’s left and did likewise, and once again, I was successful.

I thought it might be amusing to have an organ grinder in the foreground, but I couldn’t find any illustrations that suited; however, I did find the begging monkey with the cup and tried him in various locations until I hit upon placing him on the bar, interrupting the passionate kiss. 

I decided to place a large figure in the foreground and went Screaming-Jay-Hawkins hunting. I experimented with various Hawkins iterations, but the vibe wasn’t right, and then the proverbial cartoon light bulb went off above my fedora. Louis Armstrong, Satchmo!

And boom![4]

So here are my TGIF Chico Feo and AI’s response to the prompt “create a picture of Louis Armstrong playing at a beach bar.”

See what I mean.

One more example. 

Two of my favorite artists are Bruegel the Elder and Hironimus Bosch. 

I took a photo of our living room, which struck me as sort of Flemish-looking so I peopled it with Bosch figures, being in a mocking post-election funk. 

Here’s the final product.

And here’s what AI came up with when prompted “Boschian style weird people and one Boschian monster in a regular modern beach house living room.”

Of course, AI is likely to put some illustrators out of business. In fact, because Caroline subscribes to AI software, I might ask her to provide me images to illustrate some of my blog posts. However, for book covers, I always prefer scruffy over slick. 

Which cover would you guess Caroline and I chose?

[1] The awkwardly phrased sentence this footnote references is proof in and of itself of my dilettantism. A professional, a true wordsmith, would devote time to express these ideas in a more cogent fashion, spending perhaps an hour or so insuring that every word was in its proper place and that the clauses melded in pleasant fluidity. but [cue Bob Dylan]. “[That] ain’t me, babe. 

[2] BTW, David has written a screenplay for a 15-minute film based on the poolroom chapter of my novel Today, Oh Boy and is just 50K short of having the funds to start production, so if you happen to be wealthy and want to be an art patron and contribute to making a really cool indie film, contact me, and I’ll forward your info to David. 

[3] I have had a one-man show at Studio Open and have sold a couple of dozen, two of which went for $500, so there’s that.

[4] I also Hitchcock like, try to make a cameo appearance in the “paintings.” In this case, it’s the cover photo of my next book Long Ago Last Summer. Can you find it?

Loose Cadences for Loose Cannons: The Capitol Insurgent Doggerel Taxonomic Commode Ode

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The fever swamps of the radical right
Teem with an abundance of exotic wildlife,

A vast array of various species
Thriving on a regimen of bovine feces.

Look! A QAnon Shaman, bare-chested, toting a spear,
Sporting a smile instead of a sneer,

Stomping around the Capitol wreaking havoc
Fueled by a diet that’s 100% organic.

Then there’s the less colorful Klete Keller,
Who looks to be a regular sort of fellow,

Tall, wholesome-looking, clean-cut, strong of jaw,
A gold-medal winner on the wrong side of the law.

Off duty cops, insurance agents, adjunct professors
Among the herd of headweak aggressors,

A motley crew: CEOs, politicians, welders, sailors,
Some dwelling in mansions, others in trailers,

And militia men galore, bearded, cosplaying Rambo,
Their lingua franca crazy batshit mumbo jumbo,

All exhibiting a disdain for natural selection,
Maskless as they swarm to overthrow the election,

Recording their crimes with selfies and live streams
Taking self-incrimination to ridiculous extremes.

Yet when the FBI arrives to initiate their torment,
They whine and say, “I was just caught up in the moment.”

Like I said, the fever swamps of the radical right
Teem with an abundance of exotic wildlife.

Ode on a Tattooed Torso

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Last Sunday, after returning a rented golf cart, Caroline and I walked over to Planet Follywood for breakfast and then over to the Tides for a rum-infused tropical treat (her) and a hoppy yeast-born malt-based brew (I-and-I).  As we sat in a slice of shade in the corner of the plaza of the outdoor bar, a shirtless, bearded fellow walked past.  He had a picture of a spine tattooed over his own spine, flanked by a pair of wings tattooed on his shoulder blades.  “Wow, dig that,” I whispered.

We continued our conversation as the man and two of his companions – also shirtless and heavily tattooed – took a seat at a table about ten meters away, the wings-spined fellow facing us.

“What’s that tattooed on his chest?”  Caroline asked.  “Jesus?”

“Looks more like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins,” I said.

We talked about trying to take a surreptitious snapshot but decided against it.  It was then that the title came to me: “Ode on a Tattooed Torso.”

When we passed them in leaving, Caroline asked him whose face was tattooed on his stomach.

As we entered the cool of the bar proper, Caroline asked me if I had heard what he had said.

“Yeah, Jesus.”

“No, he said ‘Zombie Jesus’.”

That stopped me in my tracks.  “I got to get a picture.”

“Do you think he’ll be annoyed?”

“I’ll ask politely. If he says no, he says no.”

“Okay, I’ll wait here.  It will be less awkward without me there.”

So I retraced my steps and introduced myself, handed him my Hoodoo website card, explained that I wrote a blog and would love to take a picture and write about his tattoos.  “Of course,” he said, standing up beaming.  “That’s not the response I was expecting to get,” he said.  “I was afraid you might be offended.”

I wished I had asked him if many people were offended, but I didn’t, nor how he came to acquire such an animus for Jesus.  Fanatical parents?  Anger at the horrors of the world?  He seemed the opposite of angry, just another hedonist spending the Sabbath in self-indulgence.

So we went home and studied the photograph, which prompted several ideas.  First, this tattoo was testament to our First Amendment rights, which allow us to say or display ideas that are anathema to the majority.  As George Orwell put it in “Freedom of the Press,” [a]t any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing.”

Second, it occurred to me how tolerant we US citizens are for the most part.  If our tattooed man lived in Saudi Arabia and went out in the public square sporting a tattoo of Zombie Muhammad, he’d be a corpse faster than you could say, “All praise be unto him.”

I decided to write the poem “Ode on a Tattooed Torso” modeled on Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” employing the so-called ten-line Keatsian Ode Stanza.  Although I intended the poem to be comic, a sort of parody, it became something a bit different: praise for a brave lost soul who uses his body as a canvas to display his obviously heartfelt but unpopular beliefs.

If you decide to read it, I highly recommend hitting the audio and to read it along with my voice.

 

 

Ode on a Tattooed Torso

With apologies to John Keats

In the juvescence of the year

Came Christ the tiger [. . .]

The tiger springs in the new year.  Us he devours . . .

TS Eliot, “Gerontion”

 

Thou rotund torso beneath that russet beard,

Thou iconoclastic mockery,

Sacrilege silently, rudely, crudely shared

Like profane Pompey crockery

Uncovered from a brothel.  Zombie Jesus

Thorn-Crowned, blood dripping from brow

Come not to save but to devour us,

The antithesis of the sacred cow.

Its human canvas confronting us

With an objective correlative. Wow!

 

Shouted obscenities spit gall,

But those unheard are often ignored.

Though Bosch-like, the tattooed Last Supper doesn’t call

Attention to itself above the Zombie Lord.

Faintly rendered, half-hidden, a thatch of chest hair

Obscuring bird-beaked apostles,

Like Leonardo’s originals leaning here and there.

We barely notice them, if at all.

And who would have the courage to stare,

To lean in, to take it all in, though enthralled?

 

O badass iconoclast! Fearless commentator!

I wonder what images adorn your balls.

Onan perhaps spilling his seed? The traitor

Judas hanging from a tree?  The walls

Of Jericho richly graffitied?

Thou russet-bearded wonder, profane wretch,

You walking act of art, when old age bleeds

Away that ink, may this verse your protest protect,

Your icon-injected flesh preserve, your rude screed

Freeze in time, though an inchoate protest.

 

Screaming’ Jay Hawkins