Miriam Cahn and Sofia Crespo: Discomfort, Beauty, and How We Judge Value in Contemporary Art
Contemporary art often provokes strong reactions long before intellectual analysis begins. Viewers respond instinctively — with attraction, rejection, confusion, or resistance. These reactions frequently surface as familiar questions:
Why is this considered good?
Why is this disturbing image valuable?
What am I supposed to see here?
Couldn’t anyone do this?
These are not questions directed at one specific artist. They are questions about contemporary art itself — about value, authorship, beauty, and meaning.
Through the work of Miriam Cahn and Sofia Crespo, these questions become especially visible. Although the two artists work in radically different ways, both challenge how value in art is perceived today.
Discomfort as a Strategy in Contemporary Art
Miriam Cahn’s work is frequently associated with discomfort. Her paintings present exposed, vulnerable, and emotionally charged figures that resist visual pleasure. They do not aim to reassure or seduce the viewer.
When people struggle with contemporary art, it is often this type of work they are responding to — art that prioritises emotional urgency over aesthetic refinement. Cahn’s paintings avoid spectacle and remain deliberately unresolved. They do not explain themselves or offer easy entry points.
Rather than demonstrating technical virtuosity, her work operates through psychological pressure and intensity. The discomfort it creates is intentional. It forces the viewer to remain with uncertainty, confronting the limits of expectation around beauty and skill.
Visual Attraction and Artistic Bias
Many artists and viewers are naturally drawn to visually rich and aesthetically compelling images. Texture, complexity, and beauty often function as immediate points of engagement.
Because of this, some conceptually strong contemporary artworks may feel visually flat or resistant to certain viewers. This does not diminish their value; it highlights how different artistic strategies operate on different emotional registers.
Some contemporary art functions through refusal and denial of pleasure.
Other art works through attraction and immersion.
Neither approach is superior. They simply engage the viewer in different ways.
“But the AI Did It”: A Common Misunderstanding
Sofia Crespo’s work often triggers a different kind of scepticism, particularly around authorship:
“But the AI did it.”
This reaction misunderstands the nature of her practice.
Crespo does not use artificial intelligence as an automatic image generator. She works with machine learning as a material system. Her process involves constructing and training datasets — often rooted in biological forms, natural structures, and ecological research.
Each stage of her practice involves deliberate artistic decisions:
the selection of data
the method of training
the curation of outputs
the framing and presentation of the work
In this context, AI is not the author. It functions as a tool and collaborator, requiring intention, aesthetic judgment, and conceptual direction.
Visual Seduction and Conceptual Depth
Crespo’s work is immediately visually engaging. Her images are intricate, uncanny, and layered, drawing viewers in before revealing their conceptual complexity.
The visual appeal is not decorative. It acts as an entry point into broader questions about machine perception, biological abstraction, and the relationship between technology and nature. The work explores how non-human systems interpret the natural world and how those interpretations reshape human understanding.
This combination of visual richness and conceptual depth gives her work a strong sense of vitality and relevance.
Difference Rather Than Opposition
Comparing these two artists is not about hierarchy or competition.
Miriam Cahn works through exposure, discomfort, and emotional refusal.
Sofia Crespo works through attraction, complexity, and speculative beauty.
One challenges the viewer by removing visual comfort.
The other invites reflection through seduction and curiosity.
Both approaches are serious. Both resist easy consumption. Both demand sustained attention.
Why These Questions Matter
The recurring doubts surrounding contemporary art — Why is this valuable? Who decides? Why does this matter? — are not signs of misunderstanding. They are integral to how contemporary art functions.
Through very different strategies, Cahn and Crespo demonstrate that artistic value does not lie in medium, technique, or technology alone. It emerges from intention, context, and the capacity to hold complexity.
Some art matters because it disturbs.
Some art matters because it draws the viewer in.
In both cases, contemporary art fulfils its role not by offering answers, but by keeping critical questions alive.
