Ive been looking at paintings a lot lately, and started to wonder, what would the old masters like Rembrandt make of new technology: trains, cars, TV etc? In particular, what would they make of computers and smart phones. How would they portray them in their paintings?

Impossible to know, you say. Yes, but we can guess – thanks to AI!

Recently I subscribed to the latest Stable Diffusion (impressive) and spent many happy hours typing in prompts and admiring the results. One very productive exercise is to take a subject S and an artist A and enter the prompt, “painting of S by A”. Often the results are amazing.

Here, for example, is one result of “painting of waterfall by Cezanne”

It’s a nice picture of a waterfall, and it looks like a Cezanne. But it’s not, Cezanne never painted it. It’s what’s called a pastiche, a knock-off of Cezanne.

Nevertheless I think the average reader would be unable to give an argument that it’s not a genuine if lesser-known Cezanne painting. Of course an expert would be familiar with Cezanne’s catalog and would realize this isn’t in the catalog. Maybe there are subtler clues but I don’t see them.

I’ve generated hundreds of pastiches and on the whole I love them – some are brilliant (your mileage may vary).

But now we’re in a position to guess the approaches of the old (and no so old) masters, To get an idea of what computers mean to Rembrandt, I typed “painting of a computer by Rembrandt” and got

Definitely Rembrandt-like but the computer? He’s not a fan.

Picasso is (after Rembrandt perhaps) the world’s most famous painter. The prompt “painting of a computer by Picasso” yielded

Of course Picasso is not exactly an old master – he died in 1972, scarcely 10 years before the first Macintosh. But I’m sure he had no experience with computers in his lifetime.

We’ve already mentioned Cezanne, here’s what we get

At least the mouse is modern.

Andy Warhol lived to see computers. Here’s the pastiche

Talk about self-promotion!

Jackson Pollock is famous for this abstract paintings – he literally poured paint on the canvasses. What would he make of computers? The pastiche:

The paint dripping off the computer is a nice touch

By trial and error I produced a list of artists who reliably produced good pastiches. The list includes Picasso, Klee, Klimt, Cezanne, Matisse, Mondrian, Modigliani, Van Gogh, Caravaggio. Let’s look at a couple more.

Van Gogh:

Matisse:

Kandinsky:

And my favourite artist, a real Old Master, Caravaggio (1571-1610):

The iPhone

You’ve undoubtedly noticed that the “computers” in these pastiches are 80’s or 90’s vintage. I don’t know why – maybe the age of the training data. Let’s force it up to date by asking about iPhones.

My first result was intriguing, I prompted “iPhone by Modigliani” and got

At first sight, a typical Modigliani portrait. But look at her right hand and right ear …

Next, Toulouse Lautrec:

Yep, an iPhone!

Here’s Picasso:

Gauguin:

Klimt:

(Stable Diffusion’s not too good with text.)

And again, my favourite, Caravaggio: