Before You Ask AI You Have to Know the Answer

Mural in RA Cafe 

I was in the Royal Academy of Arts café, having just visited the brilliant Kerry James Marshall: The Histories — more on that in another blog — when my eye was drawn to a huge mural on the back wall. It looked very much like the work of Stanley Spencer... an artist I hugely admire... but it didn’t quite look 'right', so I asked ChatGPT. Here’s the result (a screenshot from my iPhone):

I wasn't fully convinced. Was ChatGPT hallucinating aka lying?....

The boys in the left hand corner of the Mural certainly put me in mind of Spencer's  figures, for example in the boys in  Spencer's monumental work at Sandham Memorial Chapel which I've written about an earlier post on this blog  It was the roundness, the form and colouring of the heads all that made me think of Spencer. 

RA Cafe Mural (detail)

Sandham Memorial Chapel (detail)

But that central image of the artist working on his canvas gave me doubts. 

I was not as confident as ChatGPT that this was Stanley Spencer’s work. It felt the figure was too weak in form, and lacking proportion or perspective - it just wasn’t 'right' - the limbs didn't work for me. The artist looks as though the artist he's struggling to paint. This can’t be Stanley. Look at the modelling and forms of the horses and soldiers in the Sandham Memorial Chapel — all well proportioned and in the correct perspective. There, all the figures look 'right' unlike that artist figure in the RA Mural.

RA Cafe Mural (detail)

Sandham Memorial Chapel (detail)

So, I had my doubts despite Chat GPT's confidence that this was 'one of the nicest surprises in the RA'.

Many years ago, I was a custodian at the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham. In fact, it was there that my art history and cultural practice really began. On a whim, right there and then  I phoned one of the custodians who I hadn't contacted for years and  to my great surprise, they answered! We had a lovely conversation; the years just rolled away. And they confirmed my suspicions: this wasn’t by Stanley Spencer at all  - in fact it was a Spencer but a Gilbert Spencer, Stanley's younger brother.

There's irony here as Stanley Spencer himself had a huge public fallout with the Royal Academy of Arts after they rejected his work for the Summer Exhibition in 1935. In protest, he resigned from the RA. It took fifteen years for the Academy to reverse that decision and reinstate Stanley as a full Academician.

ChatGPT, with all its gushing honesty and love, got it wrong - spectacularly wrong - yes it was a Spencer just the wrong one! 

To conclude AI is a great tool, a willing and very capable assistant but you still need your eye, your memory, your doubt.....and sometimes, a phone call to an old friend!