The best art critics in my view are the ones who are best at description, what Proust called “the articulation of perception.” * A good critic should describe the work so well that the reader can see what they are seeing and agree or disagree with their opinions.
My intention in AI #1, 2 and 3** is to trash AI, of course, but also to praise human beings who are the purpose and the ultimate judges of what is meaningful in art.
Here are three great critics and how their descriptions differ from AI:
AI:
The painting [To the Harbormaster] is an abstract expressionist piece, characterized by bold and unrestrained brushwork that creates a sense of spontaneity. The dominant colors are blue, red, green, orange, and brown. These colors are applied in a variety of strokes, from broad swathes to thinner lines, creating a textured and layered effect. The white of the canvas is visible in many areas, providing contrast and a sense of openness. The piece does not depict any specific identifiable objects or figures. The composition is a complex layering and intersection of colors, suggesting a landscape or abstract emotional landscape. The atmosphere is vibrant and energetic with touches of frantic, conveying a feeling of intensity and movement.
Seph Rodney:
“The canvas [To the Harbormaster], as is typical for Mitchell at this stage in her development, begins with a white background and then becomes a document of seemingly tireless muscular exertion. The painting looks like two chromatic throngs arrayed against each other, asserting their will to dominate the picture plane: strokes of cobalt blue on one side and on the other, fiery red horizontal marks. The forces are separated by a kind of column made up of red and blue vertical marks, subtended by black and some errant swatches of forest green. Both continuous and still, the melee here never stops, never pauses; it is a brouhaha of continual motion.”
Hyperallergic March 23, 2022
AI:
A quiet summer afternoon is frozen in soft brushstrokes. Two trees stand at the left, their leaves forming a cool, dappled canopy that shades a lone figure seated on the grassy, rocky bank. The person—dressed in a blue-and-white striped shirt—leans back slightly, a straw boater hat and a light cloth beside them, suggesting a pause from rowing or reading. A small green rowboat rests at the water’s edge, half in shadow, half catching the sun.
Across the calm river a row of pale cottages and low hills are reflected like a watercolor mirror, the reflections trembling gently where the sky meets the bank. The palette is dominated by clear blues and greens, warmed by sunlit ochres on the distant roofs and the grassy slope. Brushstrokes are loose and lively, capturing the flicker of light through leaves and the soft ripple of water rather than minute detail.
The scene feels intimate and unhurried—an observation of a simple, suspended moment: the hush of riverside, the cool shade, and the slow drift of light across the landscape. It’s a quiet pause that invites you to breathe and look, to notice the ordinary poetry of a summer day.
Jackson Arn:
“Camille is there in the foreground of “On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt,” from 1868. As Wullschläger notes, it’s a sloppy picture (notice the patch where the artist added his baby and then thought better of it), but also the first in which Monet attempts land’s reflection in water, one of his quintessential subjects and maybe the quintessential Impressionist subject. The river’s fidgeting surface is this painting’s real interest, but the surface refuses to play by a clear set of rules. Some bits of the reflection are long and glassy, others stubby—why? Or look at the way clouds pucker around blue sky in the lower right part of the Seine’s mirror—are they doing that because of the ripples in the water, the shape of the actual clouds, or both? We can’t know, but presumably the artist did. All of which nurtures the feeling that this picture was painted in the first person: that its maker was somebody and nobody else, sitting here and nowhere else at this time and no other.”
“The Anguish of Looking at a Monet”, The New Yorker, September 16, 2024
AI:
This evocative painting presents a nighttime scene, possibly a fireworks display over water, rendered in a dark and moody palette with visible brushstrokes.
The composition centers around a dark expanse, likely representing the night sky and possibly the water below, with bursts of light and color suggesting fireworks exploding upwards. There is an obscured shape, possibly a boat or a shoreline, in the bottom portion of the image. The framing appears to be from a distance, capturing the spectacle of the fireworks in the night sky. The elements are positioned to create a sense of depth and scale, with the bright lights contrasting against the dark background.
Sebastian Smee:
For all its indeterminacy, the Detroit painting is a very calculated arrangement of visual markers. A sweep of shoreline at bottom leads the eye in a clockwise direction up along the outline of a huge tree occluding the view at left, past the platform, or “Grotto,” protruding into the Thames from where a nightly fireworks show was launched. The burst of semi-obscured light near the center of the picture shows the climax of the display, when several rockets and flares were set off simultaneously amid clouds of smoke.
Our eyes are drawn up to a confetti shower of sparks and, at the top, a cluster of larger red, green and pink lights, before falling down through a smattering of dying sparks on the right. “The whole picture, therefore,” as the art critic Richard Dorment has written, “imitates the path of the rocket from launch, to explosion and dying fall.”
The Washington Post, November 20, 2025
And John Ruskin (who was sued for libel for this review):
“For Mr. Whistler’s own sake, no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir Coutts Lindsay ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of wilful [sic] imposture. I have seen, and heard, much of cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.”
Fors Clavigera July 1877 issue (No. 79)
A funny thing happened yesterday. I went to a jazz concert at Yamaha studios and there was a player piano in the front hall before the performance and nobody paid the slightest attention to it.
–CNQ
*Chardin and Rembrandt by Marcel Proust from the introduction by the translator Jennie
**
AI# 1: AI Review of Michele Araujo’s paintings à la New York Times’ Critics
AI #2: I Asked AI for a Negative Review of My Paintings (ouch!)
