Maxime Matthys

While exploring the creative capacities of a GAN (Generative Adversarial Netwoks), Les Jocondes questions the place of artificial intelligence in contemporary art. By imitating the creation process of the digital artworks produced through AI in the recent years, Maxime Matthys has trained an artificial intelligence machine on a database made up of hundreds of paintings that have marked the history of art. Except for one detail; the paintings that the machine used to learn to paint were exclusively fakes, made by the greatest forgers in history, such as Wolfgang and Helene Beltracchi, Han Van Meegeren, Tom Keating, etc.

The neural network thus fabricated counterfeits that meet the aesthetic criteria of the great paintings of the time. Therefore, the paintings created in Les Jocondes suggest that the works produced today using GAN networks and therefore artificial intelligence are closer to counterfeiting than to the original creation.