When photography emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, the boundaries of art were suddenly called into question. The philosopher François Jullien tells this story.
At first, there was the daguerreotype, the ancestor of the camera, whose limitations still left painting largely unchallenged. By the 1880s, however, photography had become capable of producing high-quality images of landscapes and public figures. As a result, painters, whose art and livelihood often depended on portraying faces, people, and scenes, suddenly faced technical competition.
Yet rather than giving in to despair, some artists responded with what François Jullien calls un essor de l'esprit - "an upsurge of the mind". They invented a way of practicing their art that was no longer in direct competition with photography: abstraction. This can be verified historically: the emergence of abstraction coincided with this period of transformation in art.
AI may become for us what photography once was for painting: a competitor that compels reinvention. The important question is whether this competition will diminish us, or whether it will provoke un essor de l'esprit - "an upsurge of the mind". One that pushes us to cultivate the uniquely human part of intelligence, the part that does not compete with machines.