Under the background that generative artificial intelligence (AIGC) technology empowers art education, this paper addresses intergenerational contradictions between teachers and students in AIGC art education in universities from the perspective of postfigurative culture, including the reconstruction of creative rights, conflicts in creative ontology, and dilemmas in ethical cognition. It integrates Margaret Mead’s postfigurative culture theory and the technical characteristics of AIGC art creation to construct a four-dimensional collaborative mechanism: Ideology – Teaching – Evaluation – Ethics. Ideological collaboration is realized by establishing a teacher-student learning community based on intellectual humility; teaching collaboration is achieved by implementing layered teaching of technical logic and artistic intuition; evaluation collaboration is fulfilled by promoting a composite evaluation system of “white-boxization” and “incremental value”; ethical collaboration is completed by building an ethical system that shifts from defensive prohibition to contractual consensus. This study establishes a systematic analytical framework connecting the technical characteristics of AIGC with intergenerational relations in art education.