So, to what extent do we believe that AI can help artists when it comes to writing their artist statements?

Honestly, we believe that the contribution is not as large as some might think. The artist S

statement is fundamentally related to the artist and what the artist considers to be worth sharing with whoever is going to read it. It stems from the artist entirely and is in writing, a reflection on themselves and the work.

The best way to conceptualise what the AI could do for you, in our opinion, would be to imagine that you were given the option to receive help from a team of people when crafting your artist statement. Each one of these people would have a particular role, specific level of proficiency in that role, and some of these roles would be more intrusive than the other ones.

It is important to clarify that we are not saying that AI could necessarily do a better or even a comparable job to a human counterpart, this is merely a metaphor.

In the first place, the AI could act as a proof-reader. If the artist were to feed the AI the Artist Statement that the artist has written, the AI could undoubtedly correct or at least spot grammatical and orthographic errors. In a study published in 2024 in the International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching ‘overall the performance of ChatGPT surpassed 90% in identifying and correcting eight categories of writing errors.’[3]

The AI could act as a research assistant especially for those artists who are writing a statement for the first time, and who felt that they wanted to search for further advice, beyond this guide, on how to craft an artist statement. You can also ask it all sorts of art historical or knowledge-based questions. It would be useful to always check the sources of this information and make sure that they are reliable, as you would when conducting traditional research. Furthermore, an artist could perhaps ask the AI to compare, in both form and content, the statement the artist has written with statements written by other artists.

It could arguably do a good job in translating the text into another language. Although a qualified human translator may do a better job, especially in regards to contextual understanding and cultural sensitivities and the like.[4] The AI could at least do so very quickly and possibly for free, this latter point depends on whether you can access an AI for free, or if you are paying for a subscription, and if you are doing the latter, whether you are counting everything you can do with it as ‘free’ since it is not incurring an additional charge. This is a tool that would be particularly useful for people whose English (or the language in which they are writing) is not their first language, for artists with exhibitions in a place where they speak another language, or who want to make their artist statement accessible to people who speak other languages. To those who cannot afford or do not want to pay the hourly rates of a translator, and/or do not want to or do not have the time to go out and find one, AI could be an attractive option.

The above are the roles that we can see the AI doing well and that as far as we are concerned, are not too intrusive. The following is where it gets more complex and hence requires a much more critical approach from the artist. We don’t recommend the artist employs AI for this, unless they have a very good reason to.

The AI could act as an editor. The AI could offer versions of the text that tries to adapt it to the instructions that the artist provides. For example, the artist could ask it to make the text shorter, use more formal language, or find synonyms to words that the artist originally employed.

Finally, and again there are degrees, the AI could act as a sort of Ghost Writer. This could range from taking part in the crafting of the text, after the artist fed it with a series of bullet points with the AI coming out with a fully realised piece of writing. Or a more distant version would be if the artist could ask the AI to craft an artist statement, by feeding it images of their artworks and supplementing that with anything the AI could find online, such as the artist’s social media and news. When the work leaves the studio, and sometimes even before that, people engage with the work of artists. Sometimes artists explicitly seek out this kind of engagement from people, they will invite them to their studios and exhibitions and ask them to give their thoughts on their work. This could be interesting to an artist. It could point them into new areas of research and help them see their work in a completely different light. Something similar could be said about another person reading an artist statement, it could help the artist hear how it comes across for them. The people engaging either with their work or their artist statement would know the artist more or less than others. This brings us to the point of the AI as observer. Firstly, the AI is not a person, so the encounter that occurs between a person and an artwork or a person and another person, cannot occur in this case. However, let’s say that certain AI models can employ computer vision to ‘look’ at the images. Through computer vision the AI will employ a series of algorithms, techniques and principles to extract from the images distinctive features and patterns, classify and identify them. Doing this, it can match images with other works, based on certain levels of resemblance to other artworks, be that in colour, subject or a variety of other metrics. This, of course, could be interesting to the artist who is trying to situate their practice in a certain context based on what the AI could pick up from their image. It could also, comment on ‘readings’ about a particular aspect, for example, red is a colour associated with rage, and hence the artworks might convey anger. It could use the other information it finds online to supplement this. However, even if it could be said that the AI could ‘analyse’, ‘recognise’, and ‘classify’ certain aspects of the works at the ‘highest level’, with an accuracy comparable to one of fellow artists or art historians, all it would be able to offer would be an opinion or a critique. Even the best opinion does not end up being more than that, an opinion, from the outside. Whereas the artist statement ultimately comes from the inside.

Even in the supposition that you would have a person that knew you and your work intimately, as much as they could offer perhaps fantastic advice and a mirror of how you are perceived from the outside, even them could not write it for you, nobody could, except you. Let’s take the artist statements that were written by the AI in the experiment that we realised. They were perfectly believable artist statements, but as impressive as that may be, that is not the point.

Having said this, the artist could be interested in hearing what AI has to say about their artwork and how this relates to their artist statement, and if anything of what it says resonates with them, but only in as much as it is clear in their mind, that this is simply an opinion, and from a machine.

In the most distant version of this scenario the artist could just ask it to write a generic artist statement that could plausibly be claimed by any artist.

We believe that employing the methods of using the AI as editor and employing it to craft the artist statement for you, will lead to the artist actually doing a disservice to themselves, the more extreme the scenario, the more so. The reason that we think that is that the artist statement is something YOU want to share, the idiosyncrasy of the output is what makes it special. It is an expression of your individuality.

This individuality is reflected in the content, and it is reflected in the form. As it regards content, an important component of the artist statement is its motivational and sometimes autobiographical element. The AI could not possibly know, for example, that a pivotal reason why someone started painting was because their grandmother used to paint, and they would see her painting every time they would visit her. Even less so, it could not know that out of all the memories that the artist has, and all the ones that relate directly, or indirectly to their artistic practice, that is the one that they will choose to share with the public in written form, and is so meaningful and fundamental to who they are as an artist. What is more, the artist themselves might not know that either. They might only discover it after hours and hours of reflection in front of a blank document, trying to craft their artist statement. Maybe part of this content goes beyond the biographical and motivational and it tries to situate the artistic practice in a historic or contemporary context. Here, AI’s capacity to tap into the vast amounts of information and data can seem very appealing. What it can provide would depend on what you ask of it. As we mentioned previously, it could do a good job in answering knowledge-based questions fulfilling the job of the research assistant or akin to a search engine.

The other way the artist’s individuality is reflected is in the individuality of form. Maybe it is subtle, but the way that we write is also a reflection of who we are, especially in something so personal as an artist statement. Just as the brush marks in a painting are the marks of that one artist, the words chosen and their arrangement are the marks of that person writing. Now, of course, there are artists that employ diverse methods that distance ‘their hand’, let’s say, from the work, for example, employing assistants, or machinery for their work. The same arguments that are made in favour of those in relation to artworks could be extended to the artist statement. They are completely valid. A detached artist statement written by an AI might actually make sense for those artists. This could be detached both in form and content. Again, some artists might not use their own hands but are dictating what happens at each stage of the process. Others want to remove themselves from that decision-making and utilise a process that does that for them. Both the crafting and decision-making distance is often actually part of their artistic exploration, for example, they could be commentaries on authorship or finding strategies to find new outputs for the pieces, and the decision to distance themselves was made in relation to the work. To us this is a lot more interesting than someone who could simply not be bothered and relinquished their individuality in exchange of speed and ease.

This actually takes us to one of the arguments in favour of AI as it pertains to our life, which might be at the crux of the matter. That it makes things easier and faster. In some contexts, it does and the results of that speed and ease are for the better. But in the case of crafting an artist statement, we do not think that they are. Maybe the reason that it is hard to make an artist statement is because you want to find the best way to express in written form what you want to say. Because it matters to you.

There are no rules when it comes to writing the artist statement, at most what is available is a series of guidelines and conventions. Examples, of how other artists in the past have engaged with the challenge of employing language when it comes to their artistic practice. Plus, even if there were rules, in the arts, rules are often challenged and subverted in order to experiment and explore.

Ultimately, this is merely a guide. The perspective of a few artists who are trying to navigate this fast-evolving landscape in the best possible way. It is for every practitioner to find their path and make up their mind on how to proceed and what to embrace. If this guide does not strike a chord with you, please feel free to go ahead and ignore it.

If all our work managed to do was to encourage some reflection in the artists that come across it and generously took the time to read it, we will consider it a success. 

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