I'd phrase it as: pop art and culture have been optimizing themselves against the human psyche for so long (much longer than engineering and law and planning) that we have a pretty firm bead on what an every-person will like (mathematically-speaking).
There's tons of avant garde art, but on average it's less popular (because that's not what it's optimized for).
I wouldn't be surprised if GenAI commoditizes pop art, but in turn creates greater demand for abstract, more unique forms.
By its nature, pop art and culture reduce itself to the common expectations of everyone. And as such has only few knobs to tune. But humans can appreciate a wide range of qualities and the more you play on these dimensions, the more reduced the people that will "get" it and appreciate it.
GenAI can be great for pop art, but try to create something unique to you or another person, and it will fail miserably.
I'd make the argument that the nature of tools drives much of mass/low-cost art (that is, the majority).
Very few people have the training and complete skill set to fully customize everything.
Consequently, the further you get away from "doing the thing" (e.g. playing an instrument) to "operating the tool that does the thing" (e.g. writing music for a player piano), the stronger impression the tool leaves on your work.
See also the corralling of c64 demos into hardware limitations. Or early electronic music vs 80s+.
The electronic music point is good, but I wouldn't label electronic music as inferior or not art.
It's about choosing which parts of your stack are artisanal vs which parts are implemented for you. These choices impact the form factor, but I wouldn't say that they diminish the work itself.
Yep. Imagine you are a producer that doesn't sing very well but knows exactly what you want. There are TTS VSTs that allow for custom models. You can change the key, length, modulation, etc. by just dragging the mouse along the word(s) and it integrates into your DAW like any other instrument.
There's tons of avant garde art, but on average it's less popular (because that's not what it's optimized for).
I wouldn't be surprised if GenAI commoditizes pop art, but in turn creates greater demand for abstract, more unique forms.