PORTRAITS

As AI art gets more and more sophisticated, how do we tell the difference between a portrait that’s created by a human being – with a soul – and art that’s created by a complex algorithm? And if we can’t tell the difference, will artists be out of a job?

Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy explains how AI art works, and why he thinks code can actually help artists to expand their creative universe.

But there’s one big question that remains: What does AI art tell us about the inner world of AI itself?

See the portraits we discussed:

Edmond de Belamy, published by Obvious Art

The Next Rembrandt, brainchild of Bas Korsten

Kim Sajet, generated by AI

Kim Sajet, by Devon Rodriguez

You can see Prof. Marcus du Sautoy’s ‘Creativity Code’ lecture here.

That glass of fine wine you’re enjoying so much.. What if you were told it came from a box? Would it taste different?

According to art fraud investigator Colette Loll, yes, it would. Colette draws on brain science to explain why it’s so easy to be duped by a forged masterpiece, and why even the experts get it wrong sometimes.

See the portraits we discuss:

Francis Patrick Garvan, by de Philip de László

Elmyr de Hory, in the style of Philip de László

The blockbuster Oppenheimer movie focuses on two portrayals of J. Robert Oppenheimer. One is the famous physicist known as the architect of the atomic bomb, and the second is a more vulnerable man, maligned as a communist sympathiser.

Then there’s a third portrait. It makes a cameo in the film and it resides right here at the National Portrait Gallery. Pulitzer-Prize winning biographer Kai Bird, whose book inspired the movie, takes a look with us.

See the portrait we discuss:

J. Robert Oppenheimer, Time magazine cover by Ernest Hamlin Baker

Museum director Kim Sajet takes listeners to stand in front of a portrait of Ulysses S. Grant, the revered commander who led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War. But it’s actually the frame that steals the show.

According to conservator Bill Adair, “The frame gives us information that the painting simply cannot.” In this case, the frame showcases Grant’s major battlefield triumphs. Another, gifted to George Washington by the King of France, tells the story of a political marriage.

Then, Chicana artist Ruth Buentello explains why she frames her portraits in soft, worn fabrics that she scavenges from the linen closet of life.

See the portraits we discuss:

Ulysses S. Grant, by Ole Peter Hansen Balling

King Louis XVI of France, by Charles-Clément Bervic

Gamer Niñas, by Ruth Buentello

Under the Mexican Colchas, Kinship Exhibition, by Ruth Buentello

Season five kicks off Oct. 24, as director Kim Sajet takes listeners into the National Portrait Gallery to stand in front of some of her favorite artwork.

When Gloria Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine, she wanted a cover image that would break completely with the norms of the day. There would be no high-end models and no teasers for makeup tips. Instead, the preview issue featured a goddess with eight arms. And she was blue.

Kim speaks with Gloria and also with the magazine’s first editor, Suzanne Braun Levine, about the ways women had been visually portrayed until their groundbreaking publication hit the newsstands, and how the staff at Ms. worked to turn those stereotypes on their head.

See the portraits we discuss:

Pauline Perlmutter Steinem

Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes, 1971

Marilyn Monroe

Student Protest

Susan B. Anthony

Ms. magazine preview cover

Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes, 2013

Dr. Dorothy Andersen solved a vexing medical mystery by identifying cystic fibrosis. But the mystery of her missing portrait remained unsolved.

This week, we're featuring an episode from the Lost Women of Science podcast about a physician who changed the way we understand acute lung and gastrointestinal problems in small children. But if she was such a medical heavyweight, why did her 1963 portrait disappear from Columbia University's Babies Hospital? The answer tells us something about the perils of memorialization.

Washington Post editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes says her profession serves as a canary in the coalmine for freedom of expression, a kind of oxygen monitor for democracy itself. When cartoonists are ducking for cover, she says, you'd better watch out. She also shares with Kim why she made the jump from Disney animator to thick-skinned political commentator, through drawing. Then Wendy Wick Reaves, who procured stacks and stacks of political cartoons for the National Portrait Gallery, explains why President Nixon with a Pinocchio nose is indeed a form of portraiture.

Find Ann’s work on Twitter, @AnnTelnaes.

See other images we discuss:

Polly Got A Cracker, by Charles Nelan

Anti-Cartoon Bill Defiance

The Watergate Bug, by Patrick Oliphant

The Credibility Gulf Stream, by Draper Hill

The Gulf Stream, by Winslow Homer

Indra Nooyi grew up in a conservative Brahmin household in India, but that didn’t stop her from playing cricket with her brother’s friends, or from joining an all-girl rock band. Years later, when she ascended to the top job at PepsiCo, she would push the boundaries again as one of the few women running a Fortune 500 company.

Nooyi talks to Kim about why she initially shrank from the press when she arrived in the C-suite, and how she wanted to be seen in her own portrait as an American Portrait Gala honoree.

See the portraits we discuss:

Indra Nooyi

Meg Whitman

Anne Catherine Hoof Green

Martha Stewart

From our fellow Smithsonian podcast, Sidedoor, the story of Edmonia Lewis— the first sculptor of African American and Native American (Mississauga) descent to achieve international fame. Her 3,000-pound masterwork, “The Death of Cleopatra,” commemorated another powerful woman who broke with convention… and then it disappeared.

See Edmonia Lewis’s portrait here.