I'm just saying, a guy like Van Gogh comes around just a few times a century, he is not somebody you can simply encode into a lot of different matrices, it takes a certain human life to make art like him, or even more simply, to simply see the world like him. Its not just about the way the sunflowers look, its about the choice in the first place to paint them, and making that choice in the particular context he was in, at the particular time in history he did. Its important that it was this painting that was painted after all the other paintings that had come before, both in particular for Van Gogh and for the world. And you can't ever recreate it, because its already done, and you can never step in the same river twice.
In general, and no offense to you in particular, but you will be forgotten as an artist. If this wasn't a certainty before, it is one now with all art generation and such. But don't take that as a bad thing, it is more than anything liberating. Try to remove all expectation and ego from what you are trying to make, and that will bring you closer to Van Gogh's work than any particular technique he used. Stop, in general, trying to prove yourself on the basis of the tools you use. You could use sticks-and-twine or a million-GPU-DALL-E thing, whatever, its all orthogonal to the effect the final product might have, and that effect itself is only influenced by your attitude, your sincerity, and your vulnerability, as it is applied to the work.
That is my maybe my main issue with the AI art bots, do the artists who work with them even feel vulnerable about their work? Can artistic sincerity and enthusiasm exist in AI art? Do AI artists feel the literally metaphysical stakes of what they are doing like Van Gogh did? Or is it all so constantly folded back into the idea of AI art itself? Is it all just different campaign posters for the cause of legitimizing itself as "real" art? Maybe just some time needs to pass, but I hope artists can still get nervous in the future, can still struggle at all to bring something out. It is usually the struggle the artist has with themselves that is transmuted into the work such that it makes us cry or feel profound joy or sadness or whatever, we still need that psychic energy in the world, it doesn't need to be solved.
Sometimes, yes. John Q Nerd playing around with it might not, but the "good AI artists" I follow on Twitter certainly do.
> Can artistic sincerity and enthusiasm exist in AI art?
Unequivocally yes.
> Do AI artists feel the literally metaphysical stakes of what they are doing like Van Gogh did?
Some of them seem to, though I dunno precisely what Van Gogh felt so I guess I'm not sure.
> Is it all just different campaign posters for the cause of legitimizing itself as "real" art?
Not sure where you find this stuff, but it sounds really boring. Certainly not all of it is.
Your unsolicited advice falls flat (to me), sorry. My unsolicited advice to you would be to psychologize less.
But I really really do wish you the best with this stuff, the future is bright and interesting either way for art!
Its not simply that he had good technique. Its that he felt something deep down. He felt it ever since he was a child, and made constant and frustrating (to him) attempts to then manifest that feeling. He would sometimes linger by a roadside too long and become his own little philosopher, seeing a new treatise in the ebb and flow of landscape from the sky. He had loves and heartbreak and fantasies, and found no other place to recover from those things than in patient work with the canvas. His whole life was a sacrifice, a sacred devotion to the spirit of humanity only art can capture so thoroughly and universally. You can't just do that.