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Using ChatGPT to help you write your artist state­ment

By Alonso del Arte

We're hearing a lot about ChatGPT these days. ChatGPT is an artificial in­tel­li­gence that is a few notches above the chat bots that some big companies have on their web­sites. Chat­GPT can have con­ver­sa­tions in English with peo­ple about any topic.

Its seem­ing­ly boundless ability to gen­er­ate content have led some to fear that it will elim­i­nate jobs for writers. Painters, il­lus­trators and others in the vi­su­al arts, on the other hand, see an op­por­tu­ni­ty in Chat­GPT.

Art­ists are ex­pect­ed to write art­ist state­ments. Most artists dread writ­ing those. Artist state­ments tend to consist of care­ful­ly cal­i­brated, in­scru­ta­ble pseudo-in­tel­lec­tu­al non­sense. If their art requires words of ex­pla­na­tion, what is the point of the art, then?

But, to get a solo show at a prestigious gal­lery, or to be con­sid­ered for a pres­ti­gious prize like the Kresge Fel­low­ship, an artist needs an artist state­ment.

Maybe an artificial intelligence like Chat­GPT could do better than the typical artist state­ment, which is filled with mean­ing­less terms like "con­tin­u­al­ly deferred re­la­tion­ships," and ox­y­mo­rons like "the bound­aries of elu­sive­ness," all of which the artist's work some­how examines or even questions.

Maybe Chat­GPT can do better than that, and produce an artist statement that transcends the plat­i­tudes to actually com­mu­ni­cate some­thing about the artist's work.

As with any other application of Chat­GPT, the prompt is very important. It can be short, but it needs to have enough per­ti­nent details for the artificial in­tel­li­gence to glom onto. To dem­on­strate, I won't use a real artist, except as frames of reference, I'll make up a fictional art­ist.

John K. Ford is a fictional character, he's a white guy in his thirties, he's trying to grow a beard. John is a big fan of Si­mone De­Sou­sa's abstract paintings, even though he's not him­self an abstract painter.

John does oil paintings of ham­burg­ers. Once the paint dries, John lays a sheet of clear mylar over the painting, then paints one or two emoji on the mylar, sometimes three, never four.

John's original artist statement that he wrote himself a few years ago was closely mod­eled on the artist statement of a friend of Simone's who exhibited in her gallery a few years ago. Then John tried using Mad Libs to write his artist statement. Not quite sat­is­fied with either of those, he decided to give Chat­GPT a try.

John signed up for a ChatGPT ac­count but they put him on a wait­ing list. I had been on the waiting list, too, in real life, but not as long as I thought I would be.

Once I was logged in to the ChatGPT portal, I wrote a few words about John K. Ford and com­mand­ed Chat­GPT thus:

Given that John K. Ford is an artist who paints ham­burg­ers in oil and over­lays e­mo­ji on clear my­lar, and given that John K. Ford is crit­i­cal of con­sum­er­ism, write an artist statement for John K. Ford

A few seconds passed, and then Chat­GPT started writing. It was like an actual human being was typing, and I was see­ing in real time what he or she was typing. It was going at about Doogie How­ser's speed, and it even backtracked a couple of times to reword some­thing or other. When it was done, it had come up with this:

As an artist, John K. Ford ex­plores the complexities of con­sum­er culture through his paint­ings of ham­burg­ers and the use of emoji overlaid on clear mylar. His work cri­tiques the se­duc­tive and per­va­sive nature of ad­ver­tis­ing and branding, in­vit­ing the viewer to con­sid­er the cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance of our re­la­tion­ship with food and con­sum­er prod­ucts.

With his bold use of oil paint, Ford creates vivid and striking de­pic­tions of ham­burg­ers that are at once beau­ti­ful and un­set­tling. The ham­burg­ers serve as sym­bols of the ex­cess and waste in­her­ent in our con­sum­er-driven so­ci­e­ty, while the e­mo­ji add an element of hu­mor and play­ful­ness to the work. Through this com­bi­na­tion of imagery and me­di­um, Ford chal­lenges our per­cep­tions of val­ue and meaning in a world dom­i­nated by con­sum­er­ism.

In his work, Ford invites the view­er to question their own con­sump­tion habits and to consider the impact of our choices on both our­selves and the world around us. His use of vibrant color and dy­nam­ic com­po­si­tion adds to the visual ap­peal of the work, while the clear my­lar serves as a sym­bol of the tran­sience and dis­pos­abil­i­ty of consumer culture.

Ultimately, Ford's art is a call to ac­tion, urging us to re-eval­u­ate our relationship with con­sum­er­ism and to con­sid­er the lasting effects of our choices. His work serves as a re­mind­er that even in the midst of our con­sum­er-driven world, we have the power to shape our own nar­ra­tives and to create a more conscious and sus­tain­able fu­ture.

Aside from several "soft hyphens" that I put in, this a verbatim quo­ta­tion of what Chat­GPT came up with. Just as I would do with an actual human being, I thanked Chat­GPT for its work.

Very good, thank you very much.

Then ChatGPT replied.

You're welcome! I'm glad I could help. If there's any­thing else I can as­sist you with, feel free to ask.

The thought occurs to me now that an art­ist having an artist statement on his or her web­site might help with search engine op­ti­mi­za­tion. If John K. Ford was a real artist, his art­ist website might come up in searches of art depicting ham­burg­ers, but it might not come up in searches of art cri­tiquing con­sum­er­ism if he doesn't have an artist statement on there saying exactly that.

In this fictional story, John was very im­pressed with what Chat­GPT wrote for me about him. Of course he's free to edit it as he pleases, but he says he won't change it by much. I might suggest he add a word here or remove a word there, and try to find a second way to say "con­sumer-driven." Still, it's way better than his previous artist statements.

Ultimately, ChatGPT is a tool, just like com­ple­tion suggestions on your phone's text mes­sag­ing app. It's still up to a hu­man to eval­u­ate what the machine has done and adjust the settings or adjust the output as needed.