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Art is in the Air. AI art     “In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be (...). We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art.” —Paul Valéry Abstract In 1928, Paul Valéry anticipated in La conquête de l’ubiquité a radical transformation of the material conditions of art, driven by the technical advances of his time. Almost one hundred years later, his intuitions strongly resonate in the age of artificial intelligence, where digital reproduction, global circulation, and algorithmic creation present new challenges and opportunities for art. This article revisits Valéry’s essay in light of contemporary technological developments, exploring the relevance of his diagnoses and their pertinence for understanding today’s aesthetics. Introduction In Pièces sur...

Picasso, the African Mask, and Les Demoiselles. AI generated     Introduction: The New Anxiety of Art The recent proliferation of images generated by artificial intelligence has sparked both fascination and disquiet. For some, these images represent dazzling new frontiers of creative expression; for others, they signal a loss—the end of something human, authentic, or irreducibly imaginative. This tension is hardly unprecedented. In the 19th century, the invention of photography sparked similar unease. Portrait painters feared obsolescence. Ironically, some of those who initially resisted technological mediation later became its pioneers. A few daring artists, such as Edgar Degas and Édouard Baldus, eventually incorporated the camera into their practice. What these historical echoes suggest is that the core debate may not lie in the tools themselves but in how we define authorship, invention, and artistic legitimacy. Are machines capable of creative agency? Is art still art...

Rauschberg’s portrait of Nietzsche and Saussure. AI art     “In itself, thought is like a swirling cloud, where no shape is intrinsically determinate.” — Saussure ( Course in General Linguistics , 1916/1983, p. 110) “As Dionysian artist he is one with the Primordial Unity, its pain and contradiction.” — Nietzsche ( The Birth of Tragedy , 1872/1967, §5) Introduction Two philologists writing at the turn of the twentieth century reach an uncanny consonance. Ferdinand de Saussure pictures the mind before language as a vaporous continuum; Friedrich Nietzsche dramatizes artistic genesis as an ecstatic immersion in a pre-formal abyss. Although they never met, each suggests that shape, articulation, and meaning arrive only after an underlying murk is carved into segments. This essay compares their accounts, arguing that both theorists cast language as a secondary imposition on formlessness. Yet they diverge in the frameworks that guide this view: Nietzsche pursues a metaphys...

Aletheia: Heidegger Unveils Nietzsche. AI art     Introduction For two millennia Western thought yoked beauty to a transcendent order that consoles mortal turbulence. Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger revolt against that heritage, yet they do not abandon art; they enlist it to surpass metaphysics on new terms. Nietzsche turns artistic creation into a festival of vital power, whereas Heidegger recasts the artwork as the site where truth happens. Their divergent projects illuminate two non‑religious ways in which art can break free from the old ceiling of philosophy. Nietzsche: Transfiguration through Dionysian Force In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche famously claims, “Only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence eternally justified” (Nietzsche, 2000/1872, §5). The sentence rejects transcendental comfort while refusing nihilism: art redeems life by absorbing agony into rhythm, image, and song. That alchemy hinges on the interplay of Apollonian shape and Dionysian ...

Dalí’s Homer. AI art Introduction In The Birth of Tragedy , Friedrich Nietzsche introduces a provocative thesis: the most profound truths are not found in waking reality, but in the carefully crafted illusions of art and dreams. Against the long-standing Western suspicion of illusion—most powerfully articulated by Plato—Nietzsche places his faith in the “naïve artist,” who channels the Apollonian force of aesthetic form to redeem existence from its inherent suffering. Through this metaphysical reversal, Nietzsche constructs a philosophy in which appearance is not deception but salvation. The Apollonian Dream-Faculty and the Naïve Artist At the heart of Nietzsche’s vision lies the Apollonian principle, associated with light, form, and the beautifying force of dreams. Apollo, the god of radiant clarity and measured illusion, gives aesthetic shape to the underlying chaos of life. Nietzsche writes: “Wherever we meet with the ‘naïve’ in art, it behoves us to recognise the highes...