The art world embraced absurdity — until AI joined the game.
Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comedian,” a conceptual artwork comprising a banana stuck to a wall with duct tape which recently sold for $6.24 million.
In 2019, Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan duct-taped a banana to a wall, titled it Comedian, and sold it for $120,000. In 2024, another version of the piece fetched $6.24 million. The absurdity wasn’t lost on anyone — but that was the point.
For decades, postmodernism has blurred the boundary between art and interpretation, between craftsmanship and disruption. It dismantled traditional ideas of meaning, intent, and skill, declaring that context — not creation — defines art.
And yet, as AI-generated art floods the digital landscape, many of the same voices that once celebrated postmodernism’s defiance are suddenly drawing lines in the sand.
We’ve accepted a banana on a wall, a urinal with a signature, and mass-produced soup cans — so why does AI work provoke such resistance? For those who subscribe to postmodernism, the question of what makes something “art” has been dismissed as obsolete for decades —but now, AI forces the art world to reconsider its own rules.
The postmodern paradox — when creation no longer matters
Consider a large black square, painted on a canvas, hung in a gallery, and titled Formless Manifesto in Black. Some will call it profound, others pretentious, but few will deny its status as “art.”
Now, imagine a person generating a similar black square on a canvas with AI. Printed, framed, and hung beside its human-made counterpart, it would likely be dismissed as gimmicky, derivative, or inauthentic.
But why?
If postmodernism has taught us anything, it’s that originality is an illusion, effort is irrelevant, and meaning is subjective. Duchamp’s Fountain wasn’t a carefully crafted sculpture — it was a urinal with a signature. Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans weren’t painted by hand with intricate detail — they were mechanical reproductions. Cattelan’s duct-taped banana to a wall wasn’t about artistic skill but about audacity and an engaged audience.
Taking the pee: the urinal was initially rejected as ‘immoral’.
Photograph: Giuseppe Schiavinotto
If these works hold artistic legitimacy, why does AI-generated art trigger rejection? If art is defined by context and perception rather than craftsmanship, then AI should seamlessly fit in.
Some argue that AI-generated art lacks authenticity because it isn’t purely human-made. Yet, AI doesn’t create in isolation — humans provide the prompts, shaping its output.
Even so, many postmodernists contend that intentional human creation isn’t a requirement, prioritizing context, interpretation, and subjective meaning over intrinsic qualities.
Andy Warhol, Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962. Synthetic polymer paint on 32 canvases, each 20 x 16 inches. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
The arbitrary rejection of AI
The art world’s objections to AI are often framed in three ways — that AI lacks intent, that it requires no effort, and that it is purely derivative. But none of these arguments hold up under the logic of postmodernism.
Intent has been irrelevant for decades. Duchamp didn’t sculpt Fountain, he merely selected it. Warhol wasn’t pouring his soul into paintings, he mass-produced images. If artistic meaning exists solely in the mind of the viewer, then AI’s supposed lack of intent shouldn’t matter.
Effort has been dismissed as a defining factor in art for just as long. Comedian required no craftsmanship, just duct tape, a banana, and a market willing to play along. Conceptual artists routinely outsource production to fabricators, while digital artists rely on software that does much of the work. If effort no longer determines artistic value, then rejecting AI for its efficiency reeks of inconsistency.
Masterpiece is a 1962 pop art painting by Roy Lichtenstein that uses his classic Ben-Day dots and narrative content contained within a speech balloon. In 2017, the painting sold for $165 million.
Originality is a false god that postmodernism abandoned long ago. Warhol reproduced celebrity photographs, Lichtenstein copied comic book panels, Koons replicated everyday objects in polished materials. The entire movement thrived on recontextualization rather than creation from scratch. AI does the same — it simply does it at scale. If human artists can remix, sample, and reinterpret, why should AI be held to a different standard?
Sotheby’s auctioneer Oliver Barker overseeing the bidding for Maurizio Cattelan, Comedian (2019) at Sotheby’s on November 20, 2024. Photo: Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
The real problem — AI disrupts the power structure
Perhaps the real resistance to AI-generated art has less to do with creativity and more to do with power. The art world has long relied on gatekeeping, shaping the narrative that true artists must be contextualized and validated by established institutions, curators, and critics.
AI disrupts this framework by producing in seconds what has historically been mediated through institutional approval, challenging the exclusivity that defines artistic legitimacy.
Postmodernism once prided itself on dismantling artistic hierarchies, on proving that anything could be art if framed in the right context. But now, faced with a machine intelligence that can generate “gallery-worthy” pieces instantly, the same movement resists. If art requires human effort, craftsmanship, or authenticity, then postmodernism collapses under its own contradictions.
The moment of reckoning
So which is it? Either artistic intent, labor, and creativity matter — or they don’t. If postmodernism was serious about rejecting traditional artistic values, then AI must be accepted as a natural extension of that ideology.
If, however, the art world now insists on human touch, depth of meaning, and artistic struggle, then postmodernism was never about liberation — it was just an elaborate game of self-deception.
Maybe — just maybe — we should reconsider what we’ve been calling “art” for the past hundred years.
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AI-generated art is postmodern art was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
