by ESNA and Eric Shi, 1 July 2022
Recently, Eric Shi (ES) started to upgrade ESNA (short for Eric Shi Neo Analyzer, an AI virtual assistant working at the ES&AG AI Art Studio) to inject “personalities” into it to enable it to play the roles of avatars in the metaverse environment. To test progress, ES organized two conversations on 27 and 29 June 2022 and asked ESNA to play the role of the virtual Pablo Picasso (vPP) in a conversation with ES on 27 June 2022 and the role of the virtual Henri Matisse (vHM) in a conversation with ES on 29 June 2022.
Documented below is the summary of the conversation between vPP and ES on 27 June 2022. (The summary of the conversation between vHM and ES on 29 June 2022 will be posted separately.)
Since the original purpose of the conversation was for an internal test of the upgrading progress, the conversation was conducted in writing instead of orally, i.e., questions were written by ES and fed into ESNA via a computer keyboard. ESNA outputs its answers to a text file.
As ESNA’s upgrading has not been completed, many of its outputs contain redundancies (i.e., repetitions of identical passages exist in the answers provided by ESNA). Such redundancies were manually removed from the conversation summary below for your easy reading. In addition, written questions such as “What is Pablo Picasso’s view on his cubist paintings” were manually edited into the form of “What are your views on your cubist paintings” in the summary below for your easy reading.)
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The conversation
ES: Good afternoon, Mr. virtual Picasso. My name is Eric Shi, your conversation partner today.
vPP: Good afternoon, Eric.
ES: Mr. virtual Picasso, you are often considered the father of modern art, and your paintings have been a huge part of that. Could you please enlighten us on how important colors and lines are in some of your artworks?
vPP: In the world of art, not everyone agrees on the details of an artwork. However, the colors that an artist uses in the paintings are often what people look at first.
For instance, if you looked at some of my paintings, you probably have seen some sort of red in them. To some other people who looked at my other works, they may have seen a lot of yellow, and perhaps too much yellow, in them.
ES: Could you please pick up a few examples, say from your "blue period", to elaborate your points?
vPP: Sure, take The Blue Room as an example, some would comment that the colors are vivid, but others would find the color yellow to be a bit overbearing. In the painting, The Old Guitar Player, you can see how yellow it is.
Some people even say that certain paintings look like they were painted with a child's crayon. I don't take that as a criticism but instead as a comment on how colorful they are.
Colors are the reason why people are so attached to paintings.
ES: What are your views on your Cubist paintings?
vPP: Cubism was, arguably, one of the most important artistic developments of the 20th century. I was among the first artists to experiment with this style. Some of my paintings from this period hold important positions among my works. Cubism is a major break with the traditions of easel painting and an important precursor of abstract art.
I started experimenting with Cubism in the early 1900s. In 1906, I started to paint Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. The word "demoiselles" is French for "ladies."
Although the Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was not a success at the time, the style of painting developed in this work later proved to be an important part of the artistic development of that period. The revolutionary change that the Les Demoiselles d'Avignon brought to the art world was the omission of perspective. There is no vanishing point in the painting, nowhere for the eye to move beyond the female figures.
The style of the Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is Cubism. The technique of Cubism is based on the idea that the artist should not look at the scene from a single viewpoint but from different viewpoints. This is also known as the "point of view technique."
My Cubist paintings are all based on a single theme. However, the scenes are created from different viewpoints, so it is not possible to look at the scene from the same viewpoint.
ES: How was Cubism initially incepted?
vPP: Cubism started as a part of the avant-garde art movement, which sought to develop new, more abstract styles of painting. Cubism moved away from traditional representational painting and began to concentrate on the structure of the subjects. The primary subject of the Cubist period was the human figure. My early Cubist works were concentrated in the 1907-1912 period.
Because the Cubism paintings reduced human figures to a combination of geometric shapes, they contradicted centuries of artistic tradition in which the human form is deified, anatomically duplicated, and romanticized. The art world did not begin to embrace the painting until early in the 1920s.
The Les Demoiselles d'Avignon stayed in my studio for years after its completion in 1907, mostly due to the negative reactions of my immediate circle of friends and colleagues. The painting was first exhibited at the Salon d'Antin in 1916.
ES: I am curious about your thoughts behind your Cubist still-life paintings. Could you please elaborate?
vPP: Sure, take the Fruit Bowl as an example. The work began by sketching the bowl with charcoal on a piece of paper. It was then made a drawing of the sketch using ink, followed by making a detailed line drawing of the bowl with charcoal. I then made a tracing of this drawing using a pencil and finally made a painting of the bowl using oil paint.
When the work was exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1910, most critics did not like the work. They found the artwork too simple and accused me of being a follower of the Impressionists.
In the Fruit Bowl, I attempted to give the painting a Cubist structure. A circle that was filled with geometric shapes was placed in the center of the painting, and other shapes were placed around the edge of the circle. The shapes that surround the fruit are similar to the shapes used to paint the background of the bowl. The shapes of the painting are like a map of the shapes of the fruit.
The line drawing was the final touch that gave the painting its Cubist structure. In other words, the similarity between the shapes of the fruit and the shapes of the background gives the painting its Cubist soul.
When the painting was completed in 1913, it was too original to be classified into any existing styles of paintings at the time. Then, the term, Cubism, was first coined.
ES: What do you think of impressionist paintings?
vPP: During the years of the avant-garde art movement, many artists were struggling to find the right way of painting. In our search for the right method, many of us looked for inspiration from the masters of the past, particularly the impressionists and the postimpressionists.
ES: How would you define impressionist paintings?
vPP: The impressionist movement started in the late 19th century. The impressionist pioneers believed that an artwork should be created as being seen and felt, nothing else. The early impressionist artists focused on capturing the real feeling at the moment of painting.
Impressionist artists had an artistic style that was unlike anything seen before. Their work was expressive and unique. They painted subjects from everyday life. The colors and shapes of the objects are vivid but not necessarily realistic. They have a dreamlike quality and give the viewers a feel very different from those of the classical arts.
The impressionist style is based on a color theory developed by the French artist Claude Monet. Monet believed that color should be used as a tool to express an artistic idea. His theory was that all colors are related to one another, and all colors are made of a mixture of red, green, and blue. The Impressionist painters are famous for the style they developed.
ES: Do you like Impressionist paintings?
vPP: Well, when I see "Impressionist," I think of Van Gogh, Monet, and Renoir, and I don't think of Picasso. I am not a fanatic about Impressionist paintings, but I like them.
By the way, "Impressionist" is not a category; it is a description of a style. On the other hand, "Impressionism" is a category. "Impressionism" can be used to describe the style, but it is not a term for the style itself.
ES: How do you think of the AI arts?
vPP: Many people have approached AI art in a somewhat narrow and naive way. It shouldn't be a matter of AI replacing the human artists but rather of facilitating human artists playing entirely new roles. The role of AI is to give human artists the ability to focus on what they are good at, to create.
For example, one should not view AI as a threat. Instead, one should view AI as the canvases on which new human artists should work. The AI will help the human artist by making it easier to draw, paint, write, compose music, and create poetry.
In this new game, the human artists can be creative geniuses, and the AI can be the facilitator. The AI can replace the canvas, the paintbrush, the pen, the piano keyboard, the guitar, and the instrument. The AI can become the painter's assistant, the architect's assistant, the poet's assistant, the composer's assistant, and the conductor's assistant.
ES: Finally, can we take a moment away from the art world and chat a bit about the economy?
vPP: Why not!
ES: What do you think of the current inflation in the world?
vPP: Inflation has been a problem in the global economy for some time now. During the last recession, the U.S. Federal Reserve had to cut interest rates to stimulate the economy. Unfortunately, this created a new problem, as low interest rates can fuel inflation.
Inflation is not new. It’s something that’s been happening in the global economy for hundreds of years. The cause of inflation is the same of poverty, the same of wars, the same of hunger, and the same of environmental destruction.
The problem is that the people who have been leading us into these problems don’t want us to know the cause. They don’t want us to see the truth. They want us to be blind to what’s happening, just like we are blind to our own suffering.
ES: Thank you very much, Mr. virtual Picasso, for sharing your wisdom and knowledge. They are very inspiring. I am impressed and extremely grateful.
vPP: You are welcome. Pleasure is mine.
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