Luigi Bonfante's "Arte senza artista" Examines AI and the Question of Machine-Made Art

Luigi Bonfante's book "Arte senza artista. Esperimenti estetici con l'intelligenza artificiale generativa" was published by Johan & Levi in 2026. The volume asks directly whether machines can make art, a question the author pushes well past its title. Bonfante treats AI image-making as an aesthetic and performative phenomenon, opening onto a wide field of problems: what "intelligence" actually means, how the machina artifex came into being and developed, and what tensions sit behind notions of artistic creation and intentionality, among many other threads. The book's many itineraries resist easy summary, as does the broad galaxy of artists and artistic experiences it surveys, largely drawn from recent decades. The review was published by Doppiozero, with Giacomo Petrarca and Anita Romanello credited, dated Wednesday 21 October 2026. The piece frames the volume as dense and loaded with questions that extend beyond the problem stated in its title.