Yahoo Lifestyle "Nothing will ever replace the artist," says Apple CEO Tim Cook
“Nothing will ever replace the artist,” says Tim Cook. In an era in which there is constant debate on the impact of AI on the creative economy, it’s a reassuring decree from the CEO of Apple, a company that was recognised as the world’s most valuable again in June this year and has a net worth of $3.75 trillion. Many of its products – iPad, Mac, iPhone – have been a disruptive force – not just to our daily lives, but also to our creativity as well, fundamentally shaping the way we produce, and interact with, art. “It would have been very difficult 10 years ago for us to foresee where art would come,” Cook tells me. “I almost feel like I can detect something that just a machine created. I think really great art will always be created by humans.”
We’re meeting behind the scenes at Cristea Roberts Gallery in St James’s, where Yinka Ilori is discussing his artistic process with Cook. It’s a particularly serene environment. Ilori’s recent screenprints and works are on display, brightening the rooms with their rich vibrancy, geometric, iterative patterns suffused with a variety of hues: bold pinks, greens, oranges and blues. There’s his model of Happy Street – a transformation of a gloomy underpass near Battersea commissioned by Wandworth council for the London Festival of Architecture – and his green Ojukokoro-edition basketball, named after the Yoruba for “greedy eyes”. “It’s looking at the idea that you shouldn’t be too greedy; to appreciate what you have,” Ilori explains.
Although the London-based Ilori began his artistic life constructing furniture with his hands, collecting objects from thrift stores to assemble something new, his practice has evolved from dealing with the physicality of materials to starting with a sketchbook and pen, “because it’s where my work is at my rawest form”. “The process is different now, because I work on a large scale,” he says, before going on to describe how he moves his sketches onto to the Apple app Freeform or Procreate. Colour plays a huge part in Ilori’s work and story – and he spends hours tinkering with the spectrum on the apps or on his Mac. Drawing on his Nigerian heritage, he uses colour to evoke memories for his community (“everything I do is about my community”), whether through prints, public spaces, furniture, clothing. “I try to create this kind of dream world,” he says. “I really want people to dream and to create dreams.”
Ilori shows Cook the editions from his geometric and spiritual “Paradise for all” series, in which the shapes continuously run into each other. They have a compelling meditative quality to them. Reflecting on his mother’s passing earlier this year, Ilori produced the images to remember her through the beauty of the natural world. “She was like a flower to me, right? So, I was reimagining her through my lens, dissecting the intricacies of these natural living things…”
“We’ve always been about making tools for people to express themselves,” says Cook. “When you’re talking about storytelling, or you’re talking about a painting, these all start with the idea of what it is. So, I see the role Apple plays as a tool maker. It’s an amazing process to reach this print,” he gestures to one of Ilori’s editions for a North Face collaboration. “I don’t think that process will be ever replaced. But it can be facilitated.” It is, perhaps, apt that we are speaking on the day that the company’s iteration of AI, Apple Intelligence, is widely available to those in the UK.
A common thread between the two men is the idea of the democratisation of art, whether enabling through accessible tools, or bringing art to the people through public spaces. While Cook himself is an art lover, his choice of work is in keeping with this ethos. As a fan of national parks, he owns a couple of David Hockney’s “Yosemite” series of drawings, which are in his home. “I was intrigued with David Hockney in the beginning when he started using an iPad to do his drawings,” he says. “It was an incredible intersection of a technology that I love, an art form that I love, and the outdoors.”
And it turns out, while Cook doesn’t himself doodle (“I’m not a sophisticated drawer, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate it”), he likes to dabble in photography and, unsurprisingly, take in the view from the top. “I love to hike,” he says. “One of my favourite things is to get to the summit point, then take a panorama view. I don’t get to do it often enough, so I like to go back and relive it through [the mixed-reality headset] Vision Pro .
“I love art. It’s a hobby.” Cook admits. “It’s the most important thing you can put in your home because it inspires and feeds the soul.” I’m sure many of us would agree.
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