Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction – and AI
- Terra Muhammad
- Aug 20
- 4 min read
Updated: Aug 22
We are entering a new technological age of innovation with Generative AI, and it is developing new processes at breakneck speed. Benchmarks are being surpassed, tests are being aced, and limits are constantly expanding. Though it is expected for technological advancement to disrupt other industries, the Large Language Model programs designed to aggregate text data from the internet are going far beyond their initial expectations by foraying into the creation of visual artworks and design. By borrowing the visual language of artists who have made their works available online to train AI art models, any art style could potentially be perfectly emulated by a machine. So, what does this portend for anxious visual artists, and should they be concerned for all the future implications of AI art?
In 1935, Walter Benjamin wrote his theory in seminally influential essay; The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in which he made an argument that echoed strikingly similar concerns, that the growing technologies of printing which reproduces copies of works of art, and the art of film, which had become an extremely powerful political tool, both carried serious repercussions for art as a professional industry. Would aristocrats and bankers still need skilled painters if the photographer could create more accurate work, and several weeks faster? But, he also claims that:
“Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence (...)
(...)historical testimony rests on the authenticity, the former, too, is jeopardized by reproduction when substantive duration ceases to matter. And what is really jeopardized when the historical testimony is affected is the authority of the object. (pp. 4)”
Benjamin discusses whether art copies can threaten the authority of the historical trace of time, which creates the authenticity of original work.
So without the unique qualities of time and space, would a copy of a work or art be fundamentally less significant, less valuable, and less meaningful than the key original? And does this argument hold up in the modern art world?
In 1984, a version of this debate played out in reality when Andy Warhol came under fire for his Last Supper series, about 100 printed copies of the world’s most famous refectory painting by Leonardo from Vinci.
When Leonardo painted the Santa Maria delle Grazie dining room for the Dominican friars, he treated the plaster and tempura more like one of his chemistry experiments, to see if he could slow the speedy process of “fresh wet paint” in tempura fresco painting. As a result, it crumbled away over the next few years, leaving an imprinted trace aura of his masterful work tantalizingly still visible on the surface of the dining room. Thousands of people traveled to see it in the Renaissance, and it has been one of the most famous artworks in the world ever since, replicated and copied millions of times. Despite the extent of the damage, art conservators desperately worked to restore and preserve the trace Leonardo left behind.
With the restoration effort stretching across decades, people had an appetite for a clearer memory of the Last Supper image. A controversial artist from the beginning, many art historians felt protective over the fact that his copies were clearer than the original, but when it came to demand, Warhol recognized there was a huge market for his prints.
Enter: Andy Warhol. As a critic of culture himself, he responded to Benjamin’s theory directly. In his workshop aptly called “The Factory”, dozens of assistants executed the works, making dozens of copies, rolling ink, and printing replicas that Warhol neither created, nor personally painted. But, he did make decisions and sign the finished product. Does the celebrity signature make these copies into something original and authentic in time? Can a factory process like this be called art?
This core tension between the mechanical, the copy, and the authentic when it comes to what constitutes “artwork” will only increase in the age of AI art. How much can the role of the artist be diminished before we call their job something else? Or does the concept of art itself instead shift along this rapidly developing new paradigm? Is it up to the lovers of art to decide that AI-generated art has its own importance in time and space, given its authority by a celebrity signature?
Interspecies Love Letter: Sky Painting for EARTH to SPACE (2025)
Cai-Guo Qiang is one of the visionary artists who uses AI as a tool in many of his projects. As a unique model, Cai is programmed to be trained on his own artwork archives, along with philosophy and cosmology. Though Cai's explosive work can be hard to display, the cAI model functions to digitize and scale up his decades of creativity. Working with the "gunpowder painter", cAI helps to scan the audience for facial reactions to his work and adjust his sky painting accordingly.
“When gazing at the starry sky and pondering the origins of the universe, I often recall Buddha’s teachings: ‘The universe is not within time; time is within the universe. The seeker is also that which is being sought. All answers reside in the awareness of the present moment.’”
Cai-Guo Qiang
As generative AI continues to proliferate into ubiquity, the questions pressing on our minds are: how can art maintain its temporal aura in a digital and machine-dominated system of production, and if the very essence of art has changed to include something much more digitally manufactured?
New Renaissance is a phrase to open new dialogues, something that is not destabilizing, but something that is establishing new standards.
If you feel like you are being called to be a part of this development, whether you are an arts enthusiast, a collector, or a connector, we welcome you to reach out to continue the conversation.
