So let me propose a somewhat crude distinction between 2 kinds of art:

Art consumed as a commodity , or used to sell a product. For many people, these kinds of works might not qualify as “art” at all, because they’re not intended to create an autonomous aesthetic experience. Their aesthetic qualities are often subservient to a functional purpose. This category of art includes:
- An illustration made for a company’s marketing blog, where the intention is to just have some image, any image to draw the reader in. While the illustrator may have more serious ambitions for their work, the client is often indifferent to it. They just need an image because people click links with images
- A stock photo of a generic object—a lily?—intentionally created to be repurposed in another visual work
- A portrait serving a straightforward functional purpose (corporate headshot, wedding photos), retouched in generic ways (lens correction, white balance)
- Marketing copy for a new beauty brand’s product page, software release announcement, &c
- Royalty-free “lo-fi chill beats” for a YouTuber to put in their video

Art that isn’t consumed but experienced aesthetically . These artworks have the capacity to alter our perceptions: of ourselves, certain concepts, the history or present or future of the world. Many of my favorite visual artworks reorient my perception of beauty (making a beautiful thing boring, making an ugly thing interesting); many of my favorite literary artworks change my perception of morality (by depicting the outcomes of invisible injustices, perhaps) or time. These works are more culturally ambitious, and has a certain amount of cultural agency: It can intervene with the world and change it, and change us. I use agency deliberately here—as the historian Ron Richardson writes about object agency, we don’t just “use” objects in the world; “we too are changed by the objects we engage with.” This category of art includes:
- An editorial illustration made for the cover of The New Yorker , or a painting included on the cover of the NYRB , where the emphasis is on expression, meaning-making, and interpreting a concept or feeling in a visually memorable way. The artist is encouraged, even expected, to have a distinctive style and approach
- A photograph by Wolfgang Tillmans of lilies in a plastic water bottle, instead of a vase—where the goal isn’t simply to depict these objects neutrally, but evoke something through their juxtaposition (why aren’t the lilies in a more conventionally beautiful vase?)
- A portrait photograph by Peter Hujar, Robert Mapplethorpe, or Nan Goldin. All 3 depicted LGBTQ subcultures at a time when being visibly gay/queer, or deviating from existing gender norms, was poorly understood and highly stigmatized
- Ambient music by Brian Eno, which—like the royalty-free lo-fi chill beats—are meant to be background music, but are also a statement that Eno is making about what music is/isn’t/can be

The distinction here is between art as commodity and art as cultural agent . Think commercial art versus fine art. Copywriting versus literary writing. The same type of thing (illustration, photograph, paragraph, song) can aspire to different purposes.

Celine Nguyen • Good Artists Copy, Ai Artists ____