Beyond Calculation—Art as Risk

How is art different from the products of mathematical operations? Christiane Haid shows why images generated by AI cannot be compared to creative works produced by human beings. Art is unique because the creative process includes boundary experiences, risk, and grace.

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Rapid technological development, the effects of digitalization, and the widespread claim that artificial intelligence can create “art” call for a clarification of what is to be understood by the idea of art. To examine this question more closely, we will take a look at the creative process of the artist. If there is no visible difference between an image painted by an artist and an object calculated from the data of human-made works of art, then the categories of what can be described as art in the sense of an individual’s creative achievement must be redefined.

The Creative Process

The outstanding Renaissance artist, sculptor, and painter Michelangelo (1475–1564) summarized his experience of the creative process with a cycle of poems in the volume Rime [Rhymes] as a personal testimony in words. Rainer Maria Rilke translated them into German [in 1921. Robert Southey and William Wordsworth first published selections in English in 1806, and Joseph Tusiani published the complete corpus in 1961]:

Patiently trying through long years of strife,
Only when close to death,
Can an artist succeed in giving life,
On a hard marble block, to that sweet face
Whose beauty has been living in his mind;
For one can only find
Beauty when it is late, and one is dying.
So, even nature, trying,
From age to age, from face to other face,
To reach the best of beauty in your eyes,
Must now be old, like me, and close to death.
That is why terror, mixed with beauty, feeds
So strangely my desire:
I cannot think, or tell, what hurts or helps
Me more, after I gaze upon your face, —
The end of nature or this happiness [and grace].¹

Years of practice and frequent failures are the starting point for a masterpiece that the sculptor wrests from the material at the brink of death. It’s an almost violent process that challenges the artist’s forces to shape the material to the utmost. Only at the brink of death, or one could also say at the threshold, can the artist achieve such a unique feat that a work of significance is created. This level of artistry requires, as Michelangelo writes, a lifetime of work; it is like the summit of a mountain, which at the same time brings one close to the sky and thereby to the end of life.

A second thought implicitly addresses the question of how nature could inspire such a feat by the artist. It’s the driving force within the artist that allows the divine nature of the human being to manifest itself in the finished work. Here we hear the voice of the Renaissance Man, still connected to the forces of nature and the divine in a completely different way.

The process of creation is propelled through fear in order to achieve the longed-for goal of the ideal of beauty—it is a struggle on the brink of the abyss, between the end of the world and the redeeming grace and happiness of fulfillment. Whether something comes into being and succeeds is not within the power of the creator. Their own efforts are met, as it were, by something from the other side, something like “grace,” over which they have no control.

In his conversations with art critic and journalist Joachim Gasquet, painter Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) talked about his special way of seeing the world, touching on questions about the inner motives behind his work:

What I’m trying to explain is more mysterious. It’s tangled up in the very roots of existence, in the intangible source of our sensations. It’s the very thing which I believe makes up our temperament. Only the initial strength of temperament can carry a person to the goal he is striving to reach. I told you earlier that when liberated, the brain of the artist, at the moment he creates, should be like a photographic plate, simply a recording device. But many skillful baths have brought this plate to the point of receptivity where it can be impregnated with the conscientious image of objects. Long labor, meditation, study, suffering, joy, and life have prepared it. Constant reflection on the methods of the old masters. And then, the atmosphere in which we live our lives, under this sun, think about this now . . . .²

In his artistic work, Cézanne proceeds from an inwardly experienced perception of color, which for him is linked to the “very roots of existence.” It is the source of the sensations he describes as a primal force connected to temperament. This force can carry the artist “to the goal they are striving to reach.” In addition to this sensitivity and the temperament associated with it, the artist has a capacity for perception, which they can “impregnate with the conscientious image of objects” and which they have developed and increasingly enhanced through “labor, meditation, study, suffering, [and] joy.” The study and contemplation of “the methods of the old masters,” i.e., the stream of tradition that’s worked through independently, are another element of training. Added to this more inwardly oriented side is the living environment and its effect on the artist. Cézanne’s entire biography flows into the moment of creation.

The self, now sensitized to its own inner world and its surroundings, strives toward an encounter that transcends the purely human:

[T]his sun, think about this now . . . the accident of the sun’s rays, the sun’s movement, its penetration, and the incarnation of the sun across the world, who will ever paint that? It would be the physical history, the psychology of the earth. Everything, more or less, beings and things, we are only a little stored, organized solar warmth, a souvenir of the sun, a bit of phosphorous burning in the membranes of the world. . . . I’d [like to] free this essence. It may be that the moral force scattered throughout the world represents its will to become the sun once again. That is its idea, its sentiment, its dream of God. [. . .] The delicacy of our atmosphere is connected to the delicacy of our spirit. They go hand in hand. Color is the place where our brain meets the universe.³

With this last step, a turn toward the cosmos occurs. The sun becomes an all-pervading entity toward which the earth strives as its goal. In color, the human brain and the universe meet. It is remarkable that Cézanne traverses a space of relationship in which the sun and the earth, the cosmos and man—both inwardly and externally—represent celestial bodies, moral authority, and inner goals.

The painter Paul Klee (1879–1940), a member of the Munich-based artists’ group Der Blaue Reiter [The Blue Rider], addresses the task of art and its connection to creation in his “Creative Confession,” working toward an inner order of forms:

I. Art does not reproduce the visible but makes visible. [. . .] VII. Art is a simile of the Creation. Each work of art is an example, just as the terrestrial is an example of the cosmic. The release of the elements, their grouping into complex subdivisions, the dismemberment of the object and its reconstruction into a whole, the pictorial polyphony, the achievement of stability through an equilibrium of movement, all these are difficult questions of form, crucial for formal wisdom, but not yet art in the highest circle. In the highest circle an ultimate mystery lurks behind the mystery, and the wretched light of the intellect is of no avail.⁴

Klee describes the building up of order that leads on to uncertainty, before which the intellect capitulates. Finally, he calls on the readers of his manifesto to let themselves be lifted into this world of the indefinable and thereby rise above the gray of everyday life:

[Arise, man!] Value such country outings, which let you have a new point of view for once as well as a change of air, and transport you to a world which, by diverting you, strengthens you for the inevitable return to the greyness of the working day. More than that, they help you to slough off your earthly skin, to fancy for a moment that you are God [. . .].⁵

For Klee, the path leads through differentiated structures and a final extinguishing of the intellect to a temporary fantasy of the divine. Here, too, a superhuman-divine reality is experienced.

A kind of poem [attributed] to Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) describes his creative process:

I do not seek, I find.
Searching—that means proceeding from the old and wanting
to find what is already known in the new.
Finding—that means something completely new!
The new also in the movement.
All paths are open,
and what is found is unknown.
It is a risk, a holy adventure.
The uncertainty of such ventures can
only be taken on by those,
who feel at home in the unfamiliar,
who are led in uncertainty, in guidelessness,
who surrender themselves to an invisible star in the dark,
who allow themselves to be drawn to the goal and do not—
limited and constrained by human nature—
determine the goal themselves.
This openness to all new knowledge,
to all new inner and outer experience
is the essence of the modern human being,
who, in the face of all fear of “letting go,”
nevertheless experiences the grace of feeling sustained
in the manifestation of new possibilities.⁶

Picasso points out the contrast between what is already known and what is truly new. The new is completely new, right down to its very movement; it is truly unknown and cannot be derived from the old in terms of content or form. We can encounter the new if we are prepared to give up all certainties and comforts. The layer in which the new emerges is paradoxical, because it involves the challenge of making oneself “at home in the unfamiliar,” allowing oneself to be guided without a guide, and surrendering oneself “to an invisible star in the dark.” This description shows how something must be given up and a willingness developed to become receptive to something new. The aim is that to which the impulse proceeds and not the narrowly conceived aim of the human mind. Openness to all kinds of knowledge is what defines the essence of modern man. One could quote here a sentence that Rudolf Steiner once formulated during his anarchist-revolutionary period in Berlin: “In place of God, the free human being.”⁷ This is not to be understood as an atheistic statement, but rather emphasizes the unique self-responsibility of modern man since modern times. In Picasso’s view, it is precisely the letting go of certainties, and thereby also of the traditional certainty of God, that leads to the grace of revelation. In Picasso’s work, the counterpart (God) has become more incomprehensible than in the work of the other three artists, but it is no less effective. Here, too, it is necessary to distance oneself from everything that has gone before and to venture impartially into the sea of the unknown and the unpredictable, for that is where the new comes from. The hallmark and characteristic of the artistic process is freedom and openness to results. The risk of failure is a genuine part of it. One is faced with something unattainable that may or may not reveal itself.

All four perspectives share a common recognition of a higher power beyond human control that inspires, guides, and reveals. Devotion and years of work until the piece comes to fruition, as well as a connection to the cosmos and the divine, are an integral part of the work. It’s always a matter of overcoming what is initially limited, what is human, and what has already become, and instead turning toward that which is still becoming, and of immersing oneself in the space of the unknown and unpredictable, from which the new emerges.

AI Creates “Art” Based on Computing Power

The loudly orchestrated view that AI could make “art” has been circulating in the media for some time now as the conquest of what is, so to speak, the last bastion defining the sphere of human influence. Sometimes this is noted with concern, sometimes with satisfaction, depending on whether the focus of the presentation is on the future of humanity or the development of technology. Hanno Rauterberg, a journalist for Die Zeit, asked the following questions in a discussion held on September 26, 2023, on the topic of “When Artificial Intelligence Meets Art” at the Körber Foundation:⁸ Why is AI being developed, and why are altered images being produced? These images could easily have been produced using analog means, such as photorealistic painting or cross-fading. Why are so many billions being invested in AI research, and why are there development companies working on AI-generated art and culture? AI produces plays, books, and music—is this profitable, and, he continues, what is the reason for it? Is it about rationalization measures or cost-saving opportunities? His thesis: Since culture and art are genuinely something higher and unique and constitute the core competencies of humans as the crown of creation, they are deliberately questioned by AI for this very reason. So much from Rauterberg.

The fact that these core competencies are being called into question has a fundamental impact on people’s self-image and their place in the world. If they believe these theories or if they take root in their unconscious, people lose their creative power and responsibility towards the world and their fellow human beings. They are replaced by machines, which are much more perfect and are increasingly taking over everything. One could say that humans are losing their purpose in favor of an apparatus they themselves have created, which will even make them superfluous, according to the prophecies of some transhumanists.

However, creativity had a completely different function in areas where the indigenous peoples of the Amazon live. In her essay “What is Man?”,⁹ British writer and essayist Kathleen Raine (1908–2003) describes how the earliest records of human creativity show abstract patterns and forms that cannot be found in nature. Gods are depicted with a strange appearance not based on nature; the less natural they are, the more decidedly human they are. Modern indigenous peoples of the Amazon are said to have asked the French ethnologist Lévi-Strauss why he and his fellow humans do not paint their faces with abstract patterns like the Amazonians do, in order to emphasize their humanity, their difference from the animals around them. Creativity was thus used to emphasize the distinction between humans and animals. The abstract, the unnatural, and therefore that which is created by humans from spiritual sources, emphasizes its commonality with a sphere other than the natural one. Abstraction from reality makes it possible to create a language of colors and forms detached from external sensory perception as an expression of a supernatural, spiritual reality itself.

Where AI is concerned, we are confronted with a phenomenon that, on the one hand, is a product of human creativity, but on the other hand, this creativity is not used to create a higher reality but to simulate human abilities that are already present. The computing power of machines is now being used to create something that appears to be new but is actually drawn from works of art created by humans—so, the products of past human creativity. In terms of the creative processes outlined above, this “creativity” is merely a combination of already existing elements.

The creative achievement lies not in the products that are later defined as “art,” but in the programming that underlies the computer software powering AI. When evaluating the products generated by AI, the misconception arises that these are results comparable to the achievements of human creativity. This overlooks the fact that computers cannot do anything they’re not programmed to do, even if it is to generate chaos or so-called creative products, and that they are in no way capable of making a statement without a corresponding pre-programmed command.

With this fundamental deception that AI can create art, enormous financial resources are being invested in an attempt to overcome or eliminate the last vestige of human freedom and creative self-expression. This clearly demonstrates how crucial human creative ability is. This is also evident in the following quote from Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus:

Once people think (with or without good reason) that they have a serious chance of escaping death, the desire for life will refuse to go on pulling the rickety wagon of art, ideology and religion, and will sweep forward like an avalanche.¹⁰

It is interesting that, according to Harari, the desire for life—or rather, sheer survival—should lead to the negation of the very cultural achievements that define humanity. For what would life be without art and religion? Ideology can easily be dispensed with, although the misleading interpretation of dismissing intellectual life as ideology is telling. If one thinks this perspective on life through to its conclusion, what remains is a purely materialistic world in which (as Harari states elsewhere in his book) humans function as biocomputers driven by chemical processes and algorithms. But this fails to take into account that all these utopias are man-made and conceived by humans.

This purely materialistic worldview is a dead end. As Kathleen Raine writes in the above-mentioned essay: Materialism, due to its mental constitution, can only conceive of the state as a large mechanism. And in this mechanism, humans increasingly become cogs that keep the mechanism running. This creates an ever-growing machine that gradually devours humans and their vitality.

When it comes to art, behind every artist there is an individuality with a unique biography and formative experiences. Art is the process of transformation in which the human being is transformed and connected with the transpersonal, the spiritual-divine, and the cosmic.

What Makes the Difference

Amidst the general confusion surrounding terminology, it is essential to clarify what AI does not have, regardless of the fact that we are constantly anthropomorphizing it and that we unconsciously make it pseudo-human. AI has no will of its own—it is programmed by humans and executes what is entered into it. It has no consciousness and no self-awareness because it lacks the human inner space and thus also individual reflection. It has no inner life—no soul that can produce experiences and sensations. If it expresses feelings, they are mere calculations from recorded human feelings and transmitted technically. It processes immense amounts of data at very high speed. It has no individual experience of its own, or only the simulation of one. It can make expressions of feelings if it has been programmed accordingly for certain situations and feelings. It is a massive reservoir of dead conceptions. It has no interests of its own, only what it has been programmed to be specifically interested in. It cannot pursue its own interests and goals independently. Computers are still dependent on receiving a command to turn on or off. Without electricity, nothing happens.

An Example of AI Art

To avoid remaining purely theoretical, I would like to give an example of AI-generated art using the project “The Next Rembrandt.” An advertising agency was commissioned to carry out this project, which was financed by ING Bank in the Netherlands. According to the project managers, the intention was to bring the Old Master back to life. To achieve this, the boundaries between art and technology had to be blurred. The Next Rembrandt project is a 3D-printed painting consisting exclusively of data from Rembrandt’s work. It was created in 2016 using deep learning algorithms and facial recognition techniques and won 60 advertising awards! (See image: “The Next Rembrandt”).

The following description is based on the project presentation of “The Next Rembrandt” on the Internet. I will describe the steps in detail in order to draw a comparison with an artist’s creative process. Emmanuel Flores, the Director of Innovation, reports that the first step was to compile a collection of 346 Rembrandt images from high-resolution scans. Then, a deep neural network algorithm was applied to enhance the images, increase the resolution by 300 percent, and reduce visual noise. This was followed by the classification of over 400 faces. The subject of the portrait to be created was a person aged 30 to 40, male, dressed in black. They were to be wearing a hat and looking to the right. To this end, software was developed to analyze Rembrandt’s works of art based on his use of geometry, composition, and painting materials. In order to capture the shape of the face, specific facial features such as eyes, nose, mouth, and ears were analyzed in collaboration with Microsoft, and a total of 67 characteristic features per face were mapped. A total of over 6,000 facial markers were used to classify the features from the perspective of relevance and recurrence. The computer “harvested” how to create a Rembrandt face based on these “typical” features. The individual features were assembled into a fully formed face and bust, using Rembrandt’s proportions.

A total of 20 people—data analysts, software developers, AI professors, and 3D printing specialists—were needed to produce this painting. The work took 18 months to complete. As a final remark, the advertising agency states, “We’re not 3D experts, artificial intelligence (AI) adepts, or Rembrandt lovers per se. We’re just people who like to help clients solve business issues.”¹¹ The characteristic feature of this product is that it is only what was already there. There is nothing creatively new—because the Old Master is not brought back to life by adding up his images and recombining the data. The programming work may be a creative act, but what is then programmed is the result of combining what is present—the style can be imitated, but nothing truly new can be created. One remains stuck in the past—it is the dead world of imagination that is presented in new combinations as if it were a truly new creation. Admittedly, this also applies to works produced by humans, because there, too, one can constantly repeat oneself and simply rehash old things. In this respect, AI can challenge us and indirectly point to the criteria for truly creative achievements.

What Does AI Do When It Creates “Art”?

As already described above, what is referred to as art in connection with AI consists, on the one hand, of adding up large amounts of data. On the other hand, AI can serve as a tool for artistic productions by recording the style of a particular artist in the form of data and using it to create an image in the style of that artist. For a conference in Dornach, I conducted an experiment with two of my paintings (see images). I had AI generate two images from the data of my two originals. The first command to the AI was to expand the digitized painting using generative methods. This means that the AI was to take the data from my image as a starting point and continue “painting” the shapes and colors at the edges in the style of the image I’d painted. The second command was to produce a “new” image in the style of my paintings.

In the discussion following my presentation, several participants made a telling observation: the two AI-generated versions of my images lacked formative forces. There was no discernible creative self. Instead, the images proceeded with a sense of emptiness and something chaotic and disordered.

What challenges do new technological developments present us with? In my opinion, there are several. On the one hand, it is an intellectual challenge to make clear distinctions between humans and machines. On the other hand, I see the challenge therein in exercising and developing one’s own creative potential in a world increasingly shaped and controlled by machines in order to act as a counterbalance and to develop a sense of quality. Thirdly, we are called upon to realize the meaning of our spiritual destiny by not merely enduring life in the material world, but by spiritualizing and transforming it through imbuing every area of life with soul activity; in short, by creating life out of death. We can realize this first and foremost within ourselves, in the innerspace of meditation, in artistic practice, and in the aesthetic enjoyment of art created by humans.

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Translation Joshua Kelberman

1. Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Complete Poems of Michelangelo: Joseph Tusiani’s Classic Translation, translated by Joseph Tusiani (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023), 193 (G 241; T 109–50); cf. Dichtungen des Michelangelo, translated by Rainer Maria Rilke (Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1954). Addition in brackets by the translator in order to correspond to the interpretation of the author’s essay.
2. Michael Doran, ed., Conversations with Cézanne, translated by Julie Lawrence Cochran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 113.
3. Ibid.
4. Paul Klee, “Creative Confession,” in Creative Confession and Other Writings, translated by Norbert Guterman (London: Tate, 2013), 7–14. First published as “Schöpferische Konfession,” Tribune der Kunst und Zeit 13 (1920).
5. Ibid. Change in brackets by translator.
6. Cf. Pablo Picasso quoted in Graham Sutherland, “A Trend in English Draughtsmanship,” Signature 3 (1936), pp. 7–13.
   Translator’s note: “I do not seek, I find” [Je ne cherche pas, je trouve] is attributed to Pablo Picasso via Guillaume Apollinaire, published in Les Peintres cubistes: Méditations esthétiques [Cubist painters: Aesthetic meditations] (Paris: Eugène Figuière, 1913); an expanded text circulated from the Russian journal, Ogoniok, no. 20 (May 1926) and was later published in French as “Lettre sue l’Art” in Formes, no. 2 (1930), but was judged spurious following Picasso’s denial, as recorded in Jackson Pollock: New Approaches (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1939), p. 96, note 25.
7. In 1892, as part of a kind of game “questionnaire” given to him by Grete Olden. See Martina Maria Sam, “In Place of God, The Free Human Being. Marginalia on Rudolf Steiner’s Life and Work, No. 29,” Das Goetheanum Weekly (January 4, 2024).
8. Körber-Stiftung, “Wenn Kunst auf künstliche Intelligenz trifft” [When Artificial Intelligence Meets Art] Körber-Stiftung Mediathek, September 26, 2023, accessed January 13, 2026.
9. Kathleen Raine, “What Is Man?,” in That Wondrous Pattern: Essays on Poetry and Poets (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2017). First published in Temenos 1 (1981).
10. Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (London: Harvill Secker, 2016), ch. 1.
11. VML, “The Next Rembrandt,” VML Work (Amsterdam: VML), accessed January 13, 2026. Quotation by Bas Korsten: Dutch Digital Design, “The Next Rembrandt: Bringing the Old Master Back to Life,” Medium (January 24, 2018), accessed January 13, 2026.