February 17th, 2024

Happy Saturday! I wanted to share something that really made me think this week. I’m an avid podcast listener, choosing podcasts over music any time I’m driving. One of my favorites is Invest Like the Best with Patrick O’Shaughnessy. Usually the conversations are with investors and finance folks, but this week’s episode featured Danny Meyer who started renowned restaurants like Gramercy Tavern, Union Square Cafe and Shake Shack.

Part of the conversation touched on the idea of essential things in your life, and how we all have something essential that has happened to us. How would your life be if that one thing had never happened? It got me thinking of AI art, and how I discovered it almost 3 years ago. The feeling of finally unlocking the ability to create was so powerful. It’s led me in a direction I would have never dreamed of, and I’m forever grateful for the discovery. I’ve met some amazing friends in the process and it’s hard to imagine the trajectory I would have taken without the creative outlet.

Do you have something essential? I know we all do and it’s beneficial to reflect on those things from time to time.

We’re going to explore another German artist this week, let’s jump in…

Artist Spotlight - Otto Dix (1891-1969)

Career

Otto Dix, born December 2nd, 1891 in Untermhaus, Germany was the son of an iron foundry worker and a seamstress. From a young age, Dix showed an aptitude for drawing. He studied at the Dresden School of Arts and Crafts and was exposed to a wide range of artistic styles, including Impressionism, Futurism, and Dada, which influenced his early work.

When World War 1 broke out, Dix enlisted voluntarily and served on both the Western and Eastern fronts. He served initially in field artillery before transferring to a machine-gun unit, which placed him directly in the trenches' frontline. This position exposed him to the war's most brutal aspects, including direct combat, gas attacks, and the omnipresent threat of death. His service took him to various battlefields across Europe, experiencing firsthand the differing conditions and tactics on the Eastern and Western Fronts. The vast landscapes of destruction and the diverse experiences of combat deeply impacted his worldview.

Dix was wounded several times and was briefly captured by British forces. Despite these experiences, he survived the war, a fate not afforded to millions of his contemporaries. His return to civilian life was marked by a struggle to reconcile his experiences at the front with the society to which he returned.

Unlike many artists of his time, Dix chose not to romanticize or abstract the war. Instead, he depicted it with brutal honesty, showing the maimed bodies, desolate landscapes, and psychological trauma of soldiers. His series "Der Krieg" (The War), created between 1923 and 1924, stands as a testament to his unflinching portrayal of the conflict's realities. He utilized his skills to document the scenes he had witnessed, employing a level of detail and realism that was almost forensic. His war experiences also introduced a profound psychological depth to his work. Dix delved into the psyche of the soldier and the collective trauma of a generation marked by war, exploring themes of death, survival, and the absurdity of human violence.

By the time Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Otto Dix had established himself as a critical observer of society, with his work often depicting the harsh realities of post-World War I Germany. However, his candid portrayals of war, social decay, and critiques of bourgeois society were at odds with the Nazi regime's ideology. Dix was dismissed from his position as a professor at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in 1933 due to his art being deemed incompatible with Nazi ideals. In 1937, his work was included in the infamous "Degenerate Art" exhibition organized by the Nazis to mock and discredit modern art that did not align with their propaganda. Several of his works were confiscated, and he was barred from exhibiting. His art, especially his brutally honest depictions of war and critiques of society, was condemned by the regime for its perceived pessimism and degeneracy.

Despite his contentious relationship with the Nazi regime, Dix was conscripted into the German Army in 1945, at the age of 53, during the final months of World War II. He was captured by French forces and spent the duration of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp. After the war, his style shifted significantly. He moved away from the sharp social critiques and vivid depictions of the horrors of war that characterized his earlier work. Instead, he turned to more introspective subjects, exploring themes of human suffering, old age, and the existential search for meaning in the aftermath of conflict.

Contributions to the Art World

Dix’s raw, unvarnished depictions of the chaos of war served as a social critique and a powerful condemnations of the brutality of war, highlighting the physical and psychological scars borne by soldiers and civilians alike. As a leading figure in the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) movement, he rejected the emotional subjectivity of Expressionism in favor of a more detached, critical approach to depicting reality.

This movement aimed to portray the social realities of the time with stark realism. Through this approach, Dix's work highlights issues of post-war trauma, the fragility of human existence, and the societal upheavals of the early 20th century, influencing subsequent generations of artists to engage more directly with political and social themes in their work.

Dix's impact extends beyond Germany; his work is part of the international canon of modern art, influencing artists worldwide. His honest depictions of war's realities and societal critiques resonate across cultural and temporal boundaries, making him a pivotal figure in the exploration of 20th-century traumas and existential concerns through art.

Style

In his early career, Dix was influenced by Expressionism, drawing inspiration from artists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde. His early works were marked by vivid colors and dynamic brushstrokes that captured the emotional intensity of his subjects. He experimented with various techniques, including printmaking, which allowed him to explore different textures and forms. His early prints demonstrate a fascination with the human form, often depicted in distorted or exaggerated ways to convey psychological depth.

Dix's style underwent a significant transformation post-World War I, aligning with the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement. This period marked a shift towards a brutally realistic style of painting that sought to depict the social realities of the Weimar Republic with stark honesty. During this phase, Dix honed his skills in portraiture, capturing the decadence and despair of post-war society. He employed meticulous detail and sharp, clear lines to portray his subjects, often highlighting their flaws and the underlying social critique. His war paintings and prints from this period, like those in the "Der Krieg" series, are characterized by a graphic realism that spares no detail in depicting the horrors of conflict.

He often worked from photographs and sketches, carefully planning his compositions to layer meanings and symbols. He combined traditional painting techniques with a keen observation of contemporary life, embedding his works with a narrative quality that spoke to the broader socio-political context.

After returning home from the prison camps, his later works are characterized by a blend of realism and allegory, with a continued emphasis on human vulnerability and the tragic aspects of existence. Dix's paintings from this period often reflect a search for spiritual meaning amidst the ruins of war and the moral crises of the 20th century.

Influences and Lessons

The raw, emotional intensity of Expressionism, as seen in the works of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde, informed Dix's early explorations of color and form and helped him develop his artistic voice. The dynamic energy of Futurism and the fragmented perspectives of Cubism also impacted Dix's work, particularly in his representations of technology, war, and the modern city. These influences are evident in his depictions of the chaos and destruction of World War I.

Dix had a profound respect for the Old Masters, particularly German Renaissance artists like Albrecht Dürer and Matthias Grünewald. Their detailed, precise techniques and often moralistic works inspired Dix's own meticulous approach and his interest in exploring human virtues and vices. The fantastical and grotesque imagery of Hieronymus Bosch, filled with moral and religious symbolism, influenced Dix's depiction of the darker aspects of human nature and society, imbuing his work with a sense of surrealism and allegory.

Style Representation

Collectors Corner - Tomas Antal

Tamas Antal - Poker Face

Have you had a chance to check out Stable Cascade yet? It’s the latest release from Stability AI, built on the Würstchen architecture, and is able to compress the latent space to an insane 24×24 compared to Stable DIffusion’s 128×128. This means inference is faster and tuning/training is quite a bit cheaper as well.

In practice, I’ve found that images can be generated at a much larger native resolution without suffering from the incoherence that usually strikes when you try to generate too far outside the normal native resolution of 1024×1024 for SDXL and 512×512 for SD 1.5. And it’s decently fast, clocking in at around 3 iterations per second on my 3090 using the diffusers pipeline.

I’ll share some fun samples from the code that I hacked up. These are native resolution, not upscaled.

I can’t wait to see what else can be done with these models as they get integrated into all the usual tools. I’ll get my code packed up and dumped into a repo so that you can easily give it a test run on your own hardware. You’ll need at least 12gb of VRAM though, these models are chunky.

Final Thoughts

I dropped a little Valentines day collection of my own on Emprop this week. It’s made with p5.js code as initial images, and I had fun weaving a story of long lost love letters and how they were discovered. The project description has the little story behind the collection and I’d love if you checked it out 🙂 

Script of Amour

As always, if you enjoyed this edition I would really appreciate if you shared it. Just hit the share button below. And if you’re not following me on X yet, I’d love to follow you back.

On that note, I’ll leave you with a quote in honor of the holiday of love AKA Valentines Day:

Enjoy your weekend, friend!

P.S. If you have feedback I’d love to hear it! A reply to this email goes directly to me.

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