I remember reading somewhere, maybe in an essay by John Updike, that Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, who aimed to produce purely nonrepresentational paintings, had to be careful that face-like figures did not appear in their works unintentionally. They wanted to create art that had aesthetic value without recognizable images, and the effect they were seeking would be destroyed by an accidental smiley face or two among the vigorous brush strokes and dripped paint.
I use midjourney to create images inspired by abstract art and I usually add '--no person' for this very reason.
(I wanted to avoid the phrase 'create abstract art' since I don't want to claim that it actually is art (at least I wouldn't want to claim so here on HN))
A friend in primary school used that to create comic faces: doodle randomly, find a face in the tangle and perfect it. Usually they were profiles with large noses and other exaggerations. Quite entertaining.
Huh, an image search for "plaster painting" turns up lots of people doing basically stucco bas-relief, like back in antiquity. I had no idea this was trendy.
That reminds me of the difficult constraint they must have had in making art and architecture for the game The Witness: nothing could ever accidentally seem to be, from any viewing place, one of the world's simplest shapes. Only by design.
