Most of these impersonations, visually brutal, too colorful, too noisy, reaching to the edge of grotesque, scream kitsch. I doubt the original authors would have liked something like that.

> didn't use muted colors because shiny bright stuff wasn't available

I had (mistakenly it seems) thought the muted colors were partly due to those available for printing, but i suppose it makes sense that the Arts and Craft movement would not use bright colours?

Anyway, zooming in on the detail of vegetal regions of such fakes is clear evidence. It's hard enough to reproduce the small gaps between curled leaves in these images anyway.

I don't think Arts & Crafts philosophy was explicitly against bright colors, but they did emphasize tradition, or at least their romanticized idea of it. The latter 19th century saw introduction of many bright pigments and dyes (lots of them toxic), so they were available, but I think use of them was associated with modern industry.

William Morris in particular just favored the dark and muted. His stained glass windows are the darkest I know of, and his Kelmscott Press books have been criticized for their very dark pages.

I think the author of the article is being sarcastic.

Huh...I tried rereading TFA from that perspective...and I don't know. If you take the 2nd & 3rd paragraphs in isolation, it does look like sarcasm, but further down it seems she really thinks the AI stuff is better.

Quite true. The style was deliberate and it wasn't due to lack of technology, skill and knowledge.

Eh. Most of those look like they were halfheartedly forged by Thomas Kinkade. I think it's a different level.

There really is a whole gooey schlocky kind of sheen to so much of that stuff that really zeros out any intentionality of the original works. I think the most egregious examples are more operator error than anything else, but it is what it is.