Charles Swann: (01:40)

To what extent do you think that that position, of withdrawal and delay, is suitable to handle the worst crisis in painting that we’ve seen in a century?

Nick Fudge: (01:49)

I think as an artist you have to have a position. Otherwise, you would have nothing without a position. I think over the centuries artists have done a great job, between the Italians and the Moderns, meaning putting the paint on canvas, which frankly no-one wanted them to do, practically no-one because it was clearly a dangerous thing to do. Then the postmodernists proclaimed the end of painting, not an easy thing to do. When you proclaim the end of painting, that’s a big thing. We would have probably added hundreds of thousands of paintings to the institutions had we not done that.

Nick Fudge: (02:18)

And all of the critics, every one of them, not one of them wanted me to take that underground position. They thought it was too severe. Thirty years later, they're saying, I'm glad you did it.

Charles Swann:

The criticism of you that is most prominent, is about the communication. It’s the critics saying that it needs to be based in reality. And they’re saying that the wishful thinking and the brinkmanship is just not suitable anymore in a time when the GAN is killing art. 

And I understand what you’re saying, that painters need a position, but for the past five months, it’s been, “the art has been totally withdrawn, and the shows have  been shunned and the reviews have been absent”. 

Nick Fudge:

Look, look...

Charles Swann:

But you’ve been saying it’s under control.

Nick Fudge:

Nobody knew what this thing was all about. This had never happened before. 1917, but it was a totally different, it was a fluke in that case. Okay. But other than 1917, there has still never been anything like that until now. And by the way, if you use text-to-image then there's nothing to say. But you know there are readymades everywhere today that are insufferable, some purportedly far greater than Duchamp's are. Okay? As bad as we are now. 

Charles Swan: (03:24)

Very few. [crosstalk 00:03:25]

Nick Fudge : (03:24)

Some proportionately greater than Duchamp’s are. Right now, right now, GANs are having a big moment. There are tremendous readymades in the world. You look at Dall-E, look at the readymades in Dall-E. Look at AI, look at machine learning and what's going on. This was sent to us by Turing, one way or the other, and we’re never going to forget it. Believe me, we’re never going to forget it.

Nick Fudge: (03:46)

And painters they’ve been repeating gestures at every single point. They have exhausted the avant-garde, they weren’t making progress anymore like nobody’s making progress. Before machine learning, we had the worst paintings, Charles, that we’ve had in 50  years. You know that. With postmodernism and everything else they tried, they were taking in millions of dollars. They were giving some of it to the dealers. The painters were doing well because they were targeting the dealers. I was targeting desktop indifference. I was doing good.

Then all of a sudden, the game changed, and I had to chase it down. I chased down the greatest cultural catastrophe ever in history.

Charles Swann: (04:21) I…

Nick Fudge: (04:21) 

Well, wait. And then, I chased it down. And now we're all chasing it. And I saved, by the way, by chasing it down, I saved thousands of obsolete files. If I would have ignored GAN-AI and we knew very little about the GANs, if I would've ignored it, I would have lost thousands of files, thousands of works. One image’s too much. I’m at 140,000 Generative Expands. One obsolete image is too much. I'm at 140. I would have lost thousands of obsolete files. And those critics that really understand it, they really understand it. They said, it's incredible the job that you've done. And again, I bring it up, the GAN-

Charles Swann: (04:58)

Who says that? 

Excerpt.