A story about art history.
A good friend invited me to join him on his quest to learn French, so I said, “Sure!”—as you would. I suggested, instead of learning a bunch of French words, how about we learn the history of art in French, so it’s more interesting? Part of the deal was me proving to myself I could put an e-learning package together in Adapt, a great tool I’ve known for years but never got to properly use until now.
Leonardo painting the Mona Lisa.
A few prompts down and bam! The bot got it just right.
It wasn’t quite the case with Leonardo and La Gioconda above. With this one I started with Consistent Character and ran the prompt about five times, and it was close but not quite there. So I took it to ChatGPT: no luck. Tried Gemini: same, no luck. Took it to Gwen, and it worked in the second iteration. Sounds painful, but that was actually a few minutes. There it was, Leonardo painting the Mona Lisa. Just like that—type, type, click, done.
The damn bot draws way better than I ever could. And fast!
Michelangelo sculpting the Pieta.
History of Art (from the history lens)
I didn’t want a training where you see a bunch of information, some paintings with their authors, dates, locations, etc. That’s purely data, and we don’t learn like that. We learn better when we can make connections. So, my approach was to look in the history and learn the forces behind the canvas.
For instance, why does the Romanesque architecture seem so bleak and simple? Why do the churches look like fortresses? It’s because quite often they needed to act like one. The violence was rampant and the raids happened often, so the churches had really thick, unshakable walls. They were there to offer protection. That is the kind of information that helps you understand what drove the artists to do what they did, e.g., power shifts, war, plague, etc. Why did Raphael paint so many religious pieces? Because a lot of them were commissioned by the pope and funded by the Vatican, that’s why.
More to follow :)