AI in Art: Art is Dead Again, Long Live Art

Hello friends,

Lately I keep seeing headlines declaring that AI is the death of art. Every time one pops up, it reminds me how often we’ve heard this before.

History is full of moments when a new technology or movement was loudly proclaimed to be the end of painting, or illustration, or the whole idea of “real” art. And you know what? In many cases, the doomsayers were right... at least about the old way of doing things.

The Salon des Refusés in 1863 cracked open the French Academy’s centuries-long control over what counted as proper art. The Academy didn’t vanish overnight, but its monopoly was effectively finished. Then came Impressionism, which really was the death of rigid Academic art. Yet out of that death we got one of the most beloved and popular genres of all time.

Prints were supposed to kill the need to visit galleries and museums. Instead, they brought art into people’s homes for the first time, making beauty accessible in everyday life. Photography was feared as the mortal enemy of painting because it could capture reality faster and more accurately than any human hand. But it also freed artists to explore light, color, emotion, and personal vision. Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and much of modern art bloomed in that space.

Photoshop was widely declared the death of hand illustration and commercial art. A lot of traditional work disappeared, but hand-drawn and painted pieces didn’t vanish. They simply moved into territories where the visible human touch still mattered.

So when I hear that AI is the death of art, I think... Yes. it probably is the death of certain kinds of quick commercial illustration, stock imagery, and repetitive concept work. AI is astonishingly good at generating polished, generic images on demand. In that narrow sense, the old model is already shifting.

But also, art has always had a lot of tedium mixed in with the beauty, and plenty of room for snobbery and the pursuit of excellence. (Snobbery isn't a bad word in my world. I'm a proud art snob.) Every major disruption creates a kind of death that also opens a door for more creativity.

I suspect AI is doing exactly that. It will eliminate a great deal of the boring, repetitive tasks that many artists (and clients) don’t actually enjoy. Things people are happy to do poorly will become much easier and faster. I’m not afraid or annoyed by any of this. I actually hope it creates a rubber-band effect: the more perfect, effortless, and ubiquitous machine-made images become, the more people will crave the real thing... the visible hand, the years of looking and failing and trying again, the quiet longing and joy that sneaks into a brushstroke.

People may get a little “dumber” in the sense that basic technical skills become less common, but the truly skilled will become more precious, more valued, and more sought after. The human touch will stand out even more clearly.

AI can mimic surfaces beautifully, but it doesn’t have experience, hesitation, or that little breath of life that invites the viewer to finish the thought with the artist. Classical painting survived photography. Hand illustration survived Photoshop. Human art, with all its beautiful imperfection and emotional truth, will find its way through this chapter too.

For me, this moment feels like an invitation to double down on what only a human hand and heart can offer: the slow conversation between eye, mind, and canvas, the deliberate decisions that come from years of practice, and the verve that makes a painting feel alive.

I’m genuinely curious and even a little excited to see where this leads. Some artists will collaborate with the new tools, others will move further away, and new forms will emerge that we haven’t named yet.

Warmly,
Lisa