Authenticity is Scarcity: AI Art and Capitalism
In 2017 Christie’s auctioned the most expensive painting ever sold in the history of the world: Salvador Mundi, by Leonardo Da Vinci. This interesting and controversial work sold to an anonymous bidder (who is now known to have been a proxy for Mohammed bin Salman, crown prince of Saudi Arabia) for a cool $450 million dollars.
The current location of the painting is unknown, but there is considerable published speculation that it resides (or at least at one time did reside) upon bin Salman’s mega-yacht, the Serene. (Yes, bin Salman has a mega-yacht, and yes, the mega-yacht cost $400 million).
Why do I repeat this faintly disgusting information? And what if anything does it have to do with AI Art?
We’ll get to that.
For the moment I would very much like you to come with me on a gedankenexperiment, the purpose of which is to get a better understanding of how, within our society, art is valued, and why it is valued.
The Quantum of Human Effort
We know that Leonard Da Vinci painted very few canvases in his life. This is not unusual because painting, in particular oil painting, can be a long and tedious process. Even in the best case a large painting takes a lot of work: it is manual labor, it requires time and effort to prepare the materials (especially if one has to grind the pigment and stretch and gesso a canvas), and one has to prepare with drawings, perhaps hire a model, and so on.
This assessment doesn’t account for the many hours, perhaps years, of training both of the hand and the eye that are required to learn the necessary skills to work as a draftsman and painter. Nor does it consider the time required to get a patron — for in Da Vinci’s time a patron was very necessary to support artistic activity. For painting, as we know, is an expensive endeavor. Even today paintings are costly both to make and to buy.
All this is reasonable. If something is genuinely rare and hard to source, like a moon rock, or takes hundreds of human-hours to slowly craft, like a painting or sculpture, then one would expect to pay a good price for that item.
But that is not the end of the story. We cannot ignore here the mysticism of art. Regarding Salvador Mundi itself, it is known that the painting sold in 1958 for 45 Pounds Sterling. Not £45,000. £45. At that time, it was believed to be the work of Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, one of the apprentices in Da Vinci’s studio. What happened between 1958 and 2017 to account for the remarkable price inflation? It was (in large part, for we must gloss over certain facts about bin Salman and the Saudi/Quatari rivalry) the result of re-evaluation of the work as from the hand, not of an apprentice, but of the Master.
It seems to me that the extent works of poor Bultraffio probably are few in number; so it was not the rarity of the painting exactly — the painting was absolutely rare— but the mystique of the Master’s hand, that we must take into consideration.
This property is what I will call Authenticity. Authenticity is the magic, the X Factor. A painting by Bultraffio is nice, very nice painting, but a copy or imitation in the style of the master. But when the same work is found to actually be “Authentic” and crafted by one of the chosen few, by the maestro himself, by one of the individuals who has captured the imagination of the public or the assessment of a tier one insurance company — then it is automatically elevated. It is like God has come down and pointed his Machiavellian finger at it.
I know this idea about Authenticity is different from what we might have learnt in art school. Were we not instructed that everyone can be authentic? That authenticity is simply being ourselves, “expressing oneself openly and honestly?” Were we not told that copying others is theft, that we must find our own uniqueness and our own ideas?
But that’s nonsense. Authenticity is a phenomenon that only very few can participate in and has nothing to do with originality, or even with the kind of type of art. This is by design. There is a reason for it, as we will see.
So how can we best explain this X Factor? The Marxists wanted to call it a fetish and write it off as essentially an aspect of faith — religion — which as atheists and materialists they considered imaginary. But that view is not actually a satisfying explanation. I don’t think there was anything particularly holy or salutary in the sale of Salvador Mundi. Certainly in Islam, all wealth is a result of God’s will, belongs to God, and should be used wisely for the sake of the people.
Remember with Salvador Mundi there can be nothing in the physicality of the painting as an art object, nor the image, as a work of craft and invention, nor style, as a phenomenon, which was in play in the transition from a presumed Bultraffio copy of a Da Vinci to an actual Da Vinci. It was simply the fact that Leonardo is Leonardo, and an authentic Da Vinci — a real Da Vinci — would be the most scarce of all art works. (We will ignore the cleaning and restoration process. Even if it had been cleaned, the cleaning is not what made it a genuine Da Vinci. A dirty Da Vinci would still be a Da Vinci).
So, we will begin with the idea, a working theory, that Authenticity is simply Scarcity. Not the scarcity of an anti-proton in a world of positively charged matter, but the scarcity of an object for sale. Not the scarcity of an honest man (as in the tale by Thomas Malory) but the scarcity of a valuable commodity.
The Thought Experiment
Now, let’s imagine that some additional Leonardo Da Vinci paintings are found. Say, there is a cache of stolen Nazi art that is finally released. One can expect those objects d’art would bring a tidy sum. Naturally.
Let’s imagine that, actually, quite a few more original, authentic Leonardo Da Vinci paintings are then found. Suppose there were ten found. The art market can easily absorb these. What if there were 100? That is much more challenging, but a buyer could certainly be found. Perhaps they would populate an entire new museum in Italy.
But what of 1000? 10,000? Yes, what if there were, by some strange possibility, 10,000 previously undiscovered Da Vinci paintings?
You will say that is absurd because it is impossible. We have established that painting, perhaps of all wonderous human activities, is almost tailor made for the purposes of Authenticity and Scarcity. It is simply not possible for Da Vinci to have made 10,000 paintings. It was possible for Picasso — he painted approximately 13,500 canvases in his life. But Picasso was a machine, a devil constantly painting. But not Da Vinci.
However, for our thought experiment we will make it possible. Let’s suppose the master inventor had found a way to generate his work with an invention — a painting machine we will call it. In Italian it does not sound so crass, it is a macchina da verniciatura. Or, to make it easier on the tongue for us, a macchina dell’arte — an art machine.
The Fable of the Art Machine
This art machine is given a canvas and paint on one end, and out the other comes a finished painting. And of course, Da Vinci’s invention would make something that he was satisfied with. It has his style, his feel — his brush strokes, his subject matter, his ideals. Everything required to look and act like one of his works.
After all, Da Vinci was a great inventor, it’s fanciful, but let’s just imagine that it happened. It doesn’t sound so ridiculous, at least to me.
Perhaps he showed this contraption to his great patron, Lorenzo the Magnificent. And suppose Lorenzo had told him to hide the machine. “Lascialo per le generazioni future, amico mio!” (Leave it for the future generations, my friend.)
So, Leonardo packed this invention away, but eventually, it was found. Now paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci are regularly appearing, and art experts cannot tell them apart from historically known works. One famous art historian even asserts all Da Vinci paintings must be contemporary forgeries and the Master himself never painted anything. Because, you see, nothing can be Authentic when there are so many, when there is no possibility of scarcity.
Yet another famous art historian insists that what the machine creates, being mechanically generated objects, are not legitimate Da Vinci paintings at all; for this authority believes only a manually generated work can be a legitimate Da Vinci painting. This authority cannot believe Authenticity can exist outside the scope of the individual hand craft — even though we have stipulated the machine is proven to be the work of the master through carbon dating, scientific study, and documentation found with the machine in Da Vinci’s own hand.
Meanwhile, the art machine, which has been found and running constantly for years in the hands of a local purveyor of street art, has been turning out one masterpiece after another, day after day. Initially these were stated to be copies, as a way to get them sold. But eventually the truth of the art machine comes out. The art machine, it seems, is capable of generating 200 or 300 masterpieces per day if given the materials and care is taken to keep it running. Sometimes as many as 500 are emitted. And they have been collecting and literally piling up for years, so many are generated.
The paintings keep coming and coming. And let’s be honest — they’re quite beautiful, but they are just paintings. People who like Leonardo Da Vinci’s style don’t really care about the fact they have come from an art machine — after all, Da Vinci made the machine. These new paintings are not copies of old ones. They are very much new creations and continue the creativity and expression of Da Vinci. But they are, after all is said and done, pieces of cloth with paint on them. And people have seen these ideas. One even say, that like the print-on-demand online emporiums today, the market is saturated.
So now we have reached the stage in our thought experiment when we have to ask the question, how would these paintings be valued?
It seems that the value of these works, as remarkable and unusual as they are, would be very low. Perhaps as low as 45 Pounds Sterling.
Interestingly, we learn this relatively low price does not bother the current owner of the machine. He continues operating it over and over and selling paintings, filling the world with masterworks in the style of a great Renaissance painter, happy to see them go for a small sum.
Meanwhile, one imagines the “original” Da Vinci paintings would continue to have the claim of scarcity by those who require scarcity to find value. And that is precisely why they are “Authentic.” Their scarcity is the essence of their Authenticity and is actually by design like that. The entire mythology of Da Vinci is based on it.
Ending the Fable, The Undoing of the Art Machine
Understand the stipulation here: given the same physical materials and canvas and paint, the Da Vinci art machine makes exactly the same result as he would have done. There is no way to even know if his originals were made with the machine. Who can say? Allowing for the nature and age of materials, these incredible new works are beautiful — they are endlessly Da Vinci Style. But that is also their downfall. It is a style that by its very nature does not appeal to all. The thing that appealed to everyone was largely the mystique of scarcity, although to be fair to Leonardo Da Vinci, he does and will always have a unique style and an interesting appeal.
In this situation the powerful take matters into their own hands. They feel the art machine must be falsified and engage in a program of propaganda to assert it was never real in the first place, that its works are not true Da Vinci’s and never can be.
Trying a different tack, they insist the output is filth, dirt, because it is not made manually, no human hand is involved. “Machines cannot make art!” they shout. “These works are fake, they are phony, people should dislike them and hate the man who is generating them, he lies, there is no Da Vinci art machine!” Little matter that the content and ideas in these new paintings are identical to those in Salvador Mundi or the Mona Lisa, but just of new subjects. The style and mannerisms are the same.
And because people are subject to the limitations of their own psychology, perhaps they begin to believe the arguments and lies instead of seeing things with their own eyes, as they are. Or perhaps they come to understand the regardless of how good Leonardo Da Vinci was as an artist, there are lots of great artists, and Authenticity actually is less important than just liking a style or enjoying having attractive things. They do not have to be obsessively “authentic” or magically special in their scarcity. They can be abundant — the world can be beautiful.
But, alas, the rich and powerful also progress another plan bent on destroying the art machine. Because, considering the effect of the machine on the general art world, which is rapidly depressing prices as the mysteries of the art machine are explored — mysteries that might allow other art to be generated, by other great masters — such that all Authenticity is washed away forever — the powers that be decide to act. They want to keep the value of their precious Da Vinci works, and other famous works in all the museums of the world — intact. They want to “safeguard their investments.” Because, we understand, that is all art is to them, an investment, and a trophy to put in a yacht where no one else can see it, that they go to look at it once in a while to impress their guests.
For reasons of brevity, we will have to stop here. But given scope we could probably generalize this notion of Authenticity to the construction of value across our entire economic way of life. Our lives are full of claims of Authenticity that drive economic transactions that otherwise would never happen.
Art Machines and Economics, Technology as an Art Machine
To Recap, we think Authenticity is an economic, and not artistic or psychological, concept. We think Scarcity is the core economic principle underlying Capitalism. Without scarcity, nothing has value in the economic sense; scarcity has to be created, then, in order for Capitalism to proceed.
Most people would probably agree that the essential things for life to continue, moment to moment, are air and water, followed by food, shelter, and companionship. Beyond these are the finer things in life, what we call culture, but also Empire. The history of human economics is the story of how these elements started out free and were provided gratis by Nature but progressed one by one to be converted into scarce (and thus monetized) commodities. This idea is similar to the more famous one by Rousseau: Man is born free, but everywhere, he is in chains.
The Art world is a place where this transformation is celebrated. The exact character of the celebration is precisely Authenticity itself: Authenticity, the cult of the gifted personality — that is the meaning and contents of the mystique of Art. Authenticity is the celebration of scarcity, the mythology of the rare. This mythology in turn is built on the idea that wealth is what matters. However, not all human cultures have seen things that way.
The effect of the art machine (and perhaps, of our technology in general) is to allow very much more of a commodity to be created and thus dramatically increase yield; the Machine facilitates “productivity.” But paradoxically this undercuts the scarcity, and thus viability, of the socio-economic apparatus and the transactions it is based on.
We could live in a world filled with beauty, where everyone has not just enough to eat and a place to live, but art and music and sculpture and literature — culture — we are entering into a time of plenty that could never be imagined only a few years ago. But that dream of utopian culture is very much at odds with the powers that be, who maintain their status and control through the economics of scarcity.
If you find this work interesting, please feel free to support independent artists by browsing our modest storefront: