salvador dall-e can’t draw hands
by Isaac Russo
17,000 years ago
A mother and child huddle for warmth as light from their campfire flickers off the walls of the cave they call home. They watch as scenes of horses and hunters chase aurochs through the halls, painted on the stone by hands of generations past and present, and imagine a future full of color. Their names may be lost to history, but when the woman lifts her child to the light so they can smear a red ochre beastie of their own onto the Magdalenian mosaic, she has no idea that people would come from all corners of the world to see it thousands of years later.
535 years ago
Leonardo Da Vinci sits in his Milanese workshop, dreaming of Madonnas and flying machines, when he is struck by the symmetry of life itself. He fumbles for paper among his piles of sketches and schemes, desperate to find one piece of parchment that hadn’t already been marked by his accursed imagination. When he finally does, his ideas spill from his mind like ink on the page, and the Vitruvian Man is born. Moments later, Leonardo is occupied by the peculiar way light is shining through the window, and the drawing is lost in the hoard of one of the greatest minds ever. That is until one of his students discovers it after Mister Da Vinci’s unfortunate demise some years later, and though his wisdom did not compare to that of his teacher, the student is smart enough to ensure that one of the most recognizable images of the renaissance would never be forgotten.
515 years ago
As he stands atop the complex system of scaffolds that crisscross the Sistine Chapel like cobwebs, Michelangelo envisions the genesis of man. A chorus of muses sing in his mind as he pieces it together, fresco by fresco, and the scent of wet plaster reminds him of work yet to be done. He would spend years here, suspended in the heavens among angels, creating tapestries so beautiful that even God himself would marvel. But when the work finishes at last, and the Pope sees God reaching a desperate hand across the ceiling towards Adam for the first time, it brings tears to his eyes. And when he realizes that Adam could never deign to reach even a little further in return, the vicar laments the fall of all mankind.
140 years ago
The gardens of Nuenen are blooming as Mister Van Gogh soaks in the colors of spring. His friends call him Vincent, though less and less as of late, and he begins to wonder if a fresh start would do him some good. Perhaps Paris, maybe even Rome, anywhere that the flowers bloom in the morning and the stars shine at night. All he would ever need was a paintbrush, and his own two hands of course. Then it strikes him, the flicker of inspiration that burns like divine intervention, and Vincent begins sketching his hands. One after the other, he frees the appendages from his mind and traps them in ink, and though it would be years before anyone appreciates his work, Vincent’s fingerprints can still be seen on the world of art to this day.
20 years ago
I sit at the tiny desk of my first grade class, tracing my hand with as much detail as crayon will allow. My teacher passes out safety scissors for us to cut out our work, and I am careful not to lose a finger, paper or otherwise. We then glue a popsicle stick to the back and I doodle my best rendition of a turkey on the front side, googly eyes and everything. It may look more like a chicken, but the “Merry Thanksgiving” I misspelled across its belly should dispel any confusion. I take it home and my mom pretends it is the best thing she has ever seen, even though I know my brother made the same thing last year. Regardless, it would become a source of embarrassment for me at every thanksgiving dinner for years to come.
1 year ago
DALL-E is the latest in artificially intelligent art generators, and the program is making real strides in its ability to emulate human artists, but something isn’t quite right. The prompt says The Creation of Adam in the style of Van Gogh, but no matter what they change the design is flawed. It’s the hands . . . too few fingers here, too many knuckles there. A computer can recreate any image, but it cannot understand them. It doesn’t know that we need five fingers to play the guitar, or that we could never hold a paintbrush without our apposable thumbs. No one ever told it that a six fingered man was the stuff of nightmares, or not to travel through the uncanny valley at night. These are things that come naturally to children, much like art. One cannot teach a child to be afraid of the dark, just as one cannot teach a computer program the subtleties of human expression.
Mankind may dream of Icarus until the wax is running down our backs, but a god with paper wings will always fall. Art is a divine thing, ordained by man and consecrated with our own two hands, and no machine could ever hope to replicate that.
They can’t even draw hands.
Photo of Isaac Russo
BIO: Isaac Russo is a Chicagoan who loves to form worlds with words. His work has appeared in the Manhattanville Review, Libre Lit, Gaslamp Pulp, and the Bookends Review, among others. You can find it all conveniently at www.isaacrusso.com.