Revisiting art history with AI:
What possible dialogues?

As part of my participation in the AImagine Photography and Generative Images exhibition at the Hangar Photography Art Center, this article reflects on the use of artificial intelligence in art, particularly regarding its ability to reconsider artistic heritage. This approach aligns with the theme of the exhibition, which invited photographers to explore the intersections between photography and AI, echoing historical references or significant narratives in the history of photography.

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AI: A Bridge Between Tradition and Innovation

The history of art is marked by aesthetic, technical, and conceptual revolutions. In every era, artists have found new ways to engage with their predecessors, reinvent myths, or echo them. Today, artificial intelligence stands as a new player in this dialogue. What are the possible interactions between heritage works and this emerging technology? How can we, with these new tools, reinvent forms, disrupt conventions, and initiate dialogues between the past and the present?

AI allows for the exploration of aesthetic codes inherited from the past by incorporating historical references into new creations. For example, deep learning algorithms can analyze thousands of paintings from a given period, extract recurring motifs, and reconfigure them to produce unprecedented images. This process prompts reflection on what it means to "draw inspiration from" or "reinterpret" a work in a context where the artistic gesture is partially replaced by a machine. For artists, it becomes a collaborative tool, not to mimic the old masters, but to activate new readings. My early explorations in this direction led to my series Les Progrès, where references to paintings by Watteau, Boucher, or Fragonard are not simple quotations. They are reinterpreted by AI, creating a tension between the familiar and the strangeness of anachronisms. These hybrid images highlight the malleability of codes inherited from painting through the lens of technology.

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The Reconfigured Past: Tribute or Break?

AI is not limited to a technical assistant role. It can become a critical tool, capable of revealing historical biases or questioning our artistic mythologies. A portrait generated by AI can, for example, juxtapose styles referencing different eras and invent new aesthetics. Algorithmic accidents, such as a distorted face or incoherent texture, evoke the happy accidents that have dotted the history of art. Pliny the Elder already recounted how the splash of a sponge on a canvas could unexpectedly complete the quest of a painter struggling to represent foam emerging from a horse's nostrils. These imperfections, though resulting from the machine, reveal something deeply human. Moreover, by confronting different periods or cultures, AI disrupts our perception of artistic continuity. This raises ethical questions: How far can we go in rereading heritage? Is an AI-generated work a tribute, plagiarism, or a radical break?

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Reactivating Visual Memory

AI invites us to rethink visual memory as an active and ever-evolving process. Historical references, reinterpreted by algorithms, can become mirrors of our contemporary concerns. Generative works also offer a unique experience for the viewer: that of a heritage that can be endlessly reinterpreted. Faced with an image that borrows from the masters of art history while incorporating disruptive elements, the viewer is invited to reconsider their aesthetic benchmarks. This process of updating gives a new status to works from the past, transforming them into moving sources, capable of adapting to the challenges of the present. Far from being fixed, the works of art history are in constant resonance with the contemporary world. By exploring the boundaries between tribute, reproduction, and rupture,  AI doesn't just reconfigure the past: it reactivates our visual memory by transforming it into a new process. This dynamic offers a new reading of our heritage, one that is not static, but open to new interpretations.

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Exploring AI Between Innovation and Continuity

Revisiting art history with AI means engaging with our cultural heritage while exploring possible futures. AI becomes an invitation to expand the horizons of creation, to multiply perspectives, and to imagine new dialogues between art, time, and technology. As an artist, I see these experiments as a way to transcend traditional boundaries of creation, while paying tribute to those who have shaped our visual imagination. Ultimately, revisiting art history with AI raises a central question: are we in the midst of a new artistic revolution or a logical continuity? Are the dialogues between tradition and innovation, between human hand and machine, not an extension of the interactions that have always marked the history of art? Artificial intelligence, as a medium, does not merely imitate: it proposes recompositions, hybridizations, fractures. These practices pave the way for a constant rewriting of our legacies and reaffirm that the history of art is a palimpsest, where each era leaves its mark.

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