SALON BAND rocks Julius Schmid’s 1896 Viennese salon, featuring Franz Schubert at the piano after his discovery of Garage Band software. NOTE: Hangs in Miami's popular Armstrong Jazz House.
Welcome To The Disruptive Art Of
CHRIS FOX GILSON
My artwork parallels the literary world I used to inhabit of “speculative fiction.” It imagines that the Old Masters’ protagonists used our technology, that the couples in famous Renaissance paintings met through online dating, and that Leonardo DaVinci secretly invented generative A.I., then left it to other artists.
Come see it at one of my I'm looking forward to meeting you!
But please proceed with patience. I'm re-designing this website for 5/1/2025.
When I discovered the Old Masters, it struck me how familiar their protagonists
appeared. They endured the same radical changes we face today, the disruptions
etched in agony and ecstasy on their faces. I give them our modern technology to
see how it would appear to change their lives.
Each piece in my OLD MASTERS 2.0 series may be ordered backlit with a thin panel of LED light to mimic the Masters' vibrant color palettes, with a dimmer to adjust brightness, or on a traditional stretched canvas. They're produced in editions of 200, with high-quality prints also available.
Order from Mundo Arte Gallery in Miami and Singulart.com internationally. And please contact me with your questions.
SERIES I: OLD MASTERS 2.0
This video describes my origin and development of the Old Masters 2.0 series...
"Chris Fox Gilson’s work is a fascinating blend of modern technology and classic painting, creating a bold and unexpected contrast. His innovative approach challenges the way we view both worlds, making his art both visually striking and thought-provoking."
Josephine Bodogh, Curator, Michaelangelo Immersive, DaVinci Machines & Robotics
SALON BAND rocks Julius Schmid’s 1896 Viennese salon, featuring Franz Schubert at the piano after his discovery of Garage Band software. NOTE: Hangs in Miami's popular Armstrong Jazz House.
SERIES I: OLD MASTERS 2.0
"My artwork parallels the literary world I used to inhabit of “speculative fiction.” It imagines that the Old Masters’ protagonists used our technology, that the couples in famous Renaissance paintings met through online dating, that Leonardo DaVinci secretly invented generative A.I., then left it to other artists, and that humanity's saving grace is adaptation."
This video describes the origin and development of the Old Masters 2.0 series...
CHRIS FOX GILSON
I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.
"Chris Fox Gilson's work reinterprets Western artistic and sociocultural heritage in the light of our computerized digital age, constructing a visual narrative that collides its space-time dimensions to question concepts such as author and originality, tradition and avant-garde." Dennys Matos, Art Critic, El Nuevo Herald
Welcome To The Conceptual Art Of CHRIS FOX GILSON, A New Way To Imagine Disruption.
SELFIES POND imagines Renoir's bathers capturing a fleeting moment of self-discovery that might beg for another, then curation to create a more perfect moment to show the world their "best lives." NOTE: Hangs on the wall of Apple's quality control director.
BOCACCIO’S PODCAST recasts the storyteller in the original Waterhouse to a podcaster who charms all but one listener with mixed media.
NOTE: Hangs in the SPOTIFY corporate studio in Los Angeles.
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CHRISTINA'S WORLD OF PRIME enables the sickly protagonist of Wyeth's classic to create her own world through the immediate gratification of Amazon Prime.
APPLEGARDEN imagines that a tech-savvy Serpent tempted denizens of the Garden with
the dazzling Apple VisionPro instead of humble fruit, with the unintended consequence of their forsaking any desire for real-world Sin.
THE INFLUENCER: Waterhouse’s female “Oracle” channels a teenaged fashion advisor who devastates the women forced to sacrifice obsolete pumps and stilettos
AMERICAN OCULUS anoints the grim Depression-era farmer of Grant Wood’s classic with a Virtual Reality headset to see a 3D world finally under his control, while his wife observes with an expression familiar to 21st Century male gamers.
"Chris Fox Gilson’s work beautifully highlights the timeless nature of connections while adding a fresh, contemporary layer. It’s truly fascinating and makes us think about how much our daily lives have evolved with technology."
Burcu Bostanci, Gallerist/Curator, Holy Art Exhibition, Paris, France
SERIES II: SWIPING WITH THE MASTERS
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"Seeing the couples in Renaissance paintings such as Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Family," Gilson says, "I wondered what if, rather than accepting the reality of arranged marriage, women of that era could join online dating sites to find their Prince or Merchant Prince..."
BUONACATTURA.COM Young maiden Giovana swiped left to reject suitors like the Laughing Cavalier and became intrigued when the merchant prince Giovanni Arnolfini mentioned her little dog with a respectable proposition.
SOCRATICFRIENDS.COM: Online dating would have also served a need in Florence for men who sought intimate male relationships with other men, then called “Socratic” because it mirrored
Classical Greek relationships pairing an older mentor and younger protegee.
SERIES III: OLD MASTERS OF A.I.
"We're at a juncture in technology and who knows what AI may enable us to do. Chris Fox Gilson is one artist who fully embraces this with his humorous works with a dash of social commentary and this ensures he's part of this important conversation.
Tabish Khan, Art Critic, The Londonist
Generative AI: Tool or Terminator? Gilson imagines a premise to re-focus the debate. What if history's most prolific and visionary polymath...artist, engineer, architect and philosopher Leonardo DaVinci... invented computing and generative AI in stealth to improve his own artwork and designs, then left it to future great artists?
LEONARDO’S SECRET: Perhaps by merging two unheralded inventions of computing and generative A.I., DaVinci may have conceived a Renaissance passenger airliner from his flying machine and his Mona Lisa with an empathic prompt: “Make a portrait of Giaconda’s sickly wife and give the poor woman an enigmatic smile.”
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DALI’S SECRET SAUCE catches him using the generative AI platform DALL-E to create his best-known work with the prompt, "In the style of a master painter on LSD, paint a landscape with floppy clocks in weird positions."
VINCENT’S DIVE BAR: Could Van Gogh have renamed Leonardo’s secret “Night Café” to memorialize a disreputable bar he viewed with a strong approach-avoidance conflict?
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DALI ON DALL-E: Perhaps Dali renamed DaVinci's invention DALL-E AI to make it his own and used the prompt, “In the style of a master painter on LSD, create a landscape of floppy clocks in weird places.”
SERIES IV: AUTEURS OF A.I.
As a filmmaker, Gilson envisioned an alternate universe in which the great film auteurs might have also inherited and applied the magic of DaVinci's AI to develop their own legacy creations with clever prompts.
WALT’S AI-PIPHANY: What if Walt Disney used DaVinci's gift to invent a different type of Mouse? (The video is embedded in a continuous loop within the acrylic image.
Hitchcock's Shocker: What if the Master of Suspense used a clever prompt to create the most frightening scene in cinema history? Video embedded to play continuously in the acrylic image.
Orson's Bookends: What if Hollywood's Boy Genius prompted his own DaVinci software, "In the style of 35mm B&W film, create scenes at the beginning and end to show the media mogul's lost innocence."