By Steve Taplin, TOAG Roving Reporter
I've just been to the "Monet to Matisse" exhibition currently showing at the Art Gallery of South Australia. It made me realise just how important human creativity is to society, and the beauty it offers all of us. Art provides a different perspective of life in a troubled world.
Figure 1:Â The Art Gallery of SA Exhibition Showcases Famous Impressionist Painters
The exhibition, in part, displays Monet's paintings — my favourite artist, and one who completely met, and exceeded, my expectations. Monet died in 1926, which supports my argument that artists of his calibre offer something timeless. Generations since Monet continue to marvel at his creativity, as future generations will too.
It occurred to me that the rapid uptake of internet-driven technology could cause society to lose many of the benefits art offers — the benefits of historic artists like Monet and Matisse. So I decided to write this as a challenge to you: what do you think is important about art?
Imagine you are Monet.
You are standing in a garden. In front of you is a pond, with floating water lilies and crystal-clear water. Small fish dart between the stems of the water plants, rippling the otherwise glass-like surface. Green, blue, red — a full colour palette reveals itself the closer you look.
The light shifts as clouds move and trees sway in the breeze. Reflections from above inspire the changing hues on the water. Lily pads offer their own textures and shades of green, brown, and blue. The flowers demand special attention for their fragile, unique shapes.
You have your paints, your canvas, and you're ready. You let instinct guide you — a splash of turquoise, then blue, then a dash of yellow. It looks random, but every stroke is carefully measured. You let the canvas guide you, as if some force outside your control is at work.
You embrace the changes as your emotions flow. Excited, yet your hands tremble slightly with each decision. Eager to move forward, afraid the next change might not be right. You talk to yourself, weigh alternatives, and your energy ebbs and flows as the painting evolves.
You pause. Stand back. This is your reward — you both love and hate what you see, and you don't care what anyone else thinks. You are fixed on your own assessment.
Hours in, your hands move quickly now, excitement building as the end nears. You look at the scene, then back at your work. Instinctively, you know: it is done.
Your impression of the lily pond stands before you. You, and you alone, created it. Some will marvel at its beauty; others won't. But people will talk about it. It is there for all time.
Figure 2: Monet's Paintings of the Lily Ponds
Now imagine you are using Artificial Intelligence.
You log in to ChatGPT. "Create a painting like Monet's Water Lilies," you type. It pauses, then delivers a result — impressionist in style, but something is missing.
You study it: the style, the colours, the level of detail. What's missing is passion — the drive to create something from personal human emotion. In some ways the image is too polished; in other ways, it lacks context. It is, in a word, AI-slop.
You realise the image has been assembled from a vast database of human creative effort — Monet's, and thousands of other artists' work published online. In a sense, it has been borrowed from all of them at once. That is how AI works: it accesses the sum of human creative endeavour and blends it into something new. Many eggs broken, in pursuit of imitating something that was already perfect.
Figure 3:Â Monet has been credited as one of the first impressionist artists
Humankind is beginning to understand that not everything needs to be fast, cheap, and trivial. Machine learning has its place — crunching numbers, helping discover solutions to cancer or poverty. But art does not benefit from the homogenisation of creative spirit.
Figure 4:Â Claude Monet's Paintings are timeless
Monet's work is timeless beauty that simply cannot be replicated. Leave art to artists!
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* Steve Taplin is an Adelaide-based impressionist painter who focuses on paintings of nature.
To view Steve's work, head to: https://www.theonlineartgallery.com.au/collections/steve-taplin
