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With all the developments in AI art in the last year taking up so much of the public awareness, it can be easy to forget that the movement has roots that reach back far before Stable Diffusion or Midjourney arrived on the scene. Robbie Barrat<\/a>, for example, is a household name in the artificial intelligence and generative art universe and also represents an important part of crypto art history. <\/p>\n Having experimented with machine learning and GANs (generative adversarial networks) since 2018, Barrat\u2019s early explorations led him to produce a series of 300 AI-generated nude art portraits that have since become some of the most sought-after crypto art in existence.<\/p>\n Recently, Barrat\u2019s AI Generated Nude Portrait #7 Frame #111<\/a> sold for 175 ETH ($343,761). The sale has incurred criticism largely from the anti-AI art crowd, who claim the artwork is ugly, and yet another example of unimaginative art spit out from an unfeeling algorithm. However, such faultfinding glazes over much of Barrat\u2019s artistic vision and the cultural importance of the work and its origin. Whether you\u2019re a critic or supporter of Barrat\u2019s work, both are worth a close look.<\/p>\n The reason for the legacy status of those 300 nude portraits goes beyond the innovative approach that Barrat used in their creation. In the summer of 2018, Christie\u2019s hosted its first-ever Tech Summit in London, shortly after the NFT marketplace SuperRare had launched. The world of tokenized digital art had barely made a blip of an appearance in the general public\u2019s consciousness at this time, and SuperRare was encouraged by the auction house to contribute to the event attendees\u2019 gift bags.<\/p>\n They partnered with and enlisted Barrat, who was the first artist to tokenize art on the platform, and Jason Bailey, its first collector, to create artwork consisting of 300 frames that could be minted and given away to people at the event. Thus, AI Generated Nude Portrait #7 was born, consisting of 300 unique images in layers, which, when put on top of each other, would present the viewer with the completed piece. The works were added to ETH gift cards that recipients could later redeem for the 1\/1 token.\u00a0<\/p>\n But few redeemed their gift cards over the years, meaning many of the pieces were lost. Appropriately, the pieces in the collection simply became known as The Lost Robbies. To this day, only 46 of the generative nude portraits can be found on Barrat\u2019s SuperRare page<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n A few months after Christie\u2019s tech summit, Barrat\u2019s code was used by the French artist trio Obvious to make Portrait of Edmond Belamy, which sold at a Christie\u2019s auction<\/a> for $432,500. It was the first AI-generated artwork sold by the legacy auction house, and though Barrat received no initial credit or compensation for the work, the sale put Barrat on the art world\u2019s radar. <\/p>\n Combined with The Lost Robbies\u2019 origin story and subsequent rarity, the pieces that did emerge from the original group of 300 ended up selling for as much as $1 million<\/a>. Legacy auction house Sotheby\u2019s<\/a> even wrote of Barrat\u2019s Portrait #7 Frame #64, which sold in March of 2022 for over $800,000, that it was symbolic of a singular moment in time in which a pre-pandemic shift in the art world \u201ccatapulted digital art into the world\u2019s cultural and economic psyche.\u201d<\/p>\n Abstract art is perennially subject to pointed condemnation, especially if it brings a high price tag. Barrat\u2019s AI nude portraits, AI Generated Nude Portrait #7 Frame #111 in particular, are no different. The piece has been referred to<\/a> as \u201crepulsive,\u201d reminiscent of a \u201cdead deer,\u201d and everything in between, but ridicule over the artwork\u2019s appearance is the less important issue at play here. Great art doesn\u2019t have to look pretty, even if all members of society could agree on just what pretty is or means, which is itself a fool\u2019s errand. <\/p>\nThe Lost Robbies<\/h2>\n
Aesthetics, narrative, and everything in between <\/h2>\n