An Invitation to Artistic Exploration

A guide for creators struggling with getting started.

By Izora Roach

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my mother for facilitating my artistic exploration and (very expensive) education.

Thank you to my friends, who not only let me influence them but also influenced me.

Thank you to my teachers, who broke and made me in equal measure.

Thank you to the reader, who sees value in art and wishes to add to it.

Introduction

Art is Weird

I've been an artist my entire life. All my life, I’ve been drawing.

My grandmother held onto a drawing of a lion I had made when I was two years old for her whole life. My aunt may still have it someplace. It's crouched in the grass, stalking the viewer underneath a smoldering sun. In my Junior year of high school, I drew every strand of fur and every whisker of a lioness. I rendered her jowls, bloodied from a successful kill in Crayola colored pencils. I'm sure that this month as I’m writing this, I’ve drawn blood-soaked hunters again. What can I say? It's a theme I adore.

I’ve been a prolific artist, drawing on every scrap of paper I could get my hands on. I drew on homework. I drew on desks. My lined notebooks were more art than class notes by volume. They were only spared when I upgraded to a sketchbook. I ran through one a year. The paper I liked the most was a pale gold mid-tone. I drew a live model in dark green after my teacher asked me to try a darker pencil. In retrospect, red on orange was overstaying its welcome.

I started with #2 pencils and graduated to pens once I was brave enough. Color pencils were in the rotation sometimes, but ballpoint pens were always available. I’ve painted, printed, written, and sculpted, and each was a wonderful experience. I’ve also made some very poor attempts at wood and metalworking, but I learned from them, too.

I drew during class. I drew during my SAT. I drew waiting for work interviews. I was a menace to politeness, and at least two teachers complained about it.

You don’t have to be a fanatic like me to be an artist. I say all this to say: art is rarely polite.

Art is a strange and disruptive communication device. It’s confrontational and it is easy to misunderstand, but even that misunderstanding can be to its advantage. When compared to more straightforward forms of communication, art is something twisted. Art is the representation of something imagined in the mind, warped by the artist's ability to construct the vision.

It is only a snapshot of the artist’s stream of consciousness. It is an opportunity to see the world through someone else’s eyes. It is as beautiful as it is confusing, both alien and familiar.

In art, there is life and meaning. Meaning is exactly what our world needs right now. Life can feel overwhelming and confusing, even on good days. Sometimes, it’s as if everything terrible is always happening.

Why am I Writing This

I have both very selfish and principled reasons for writing this essay and beginning this series. On the selfish side, I love every part of art. Thinking about art is an activity I could spend 12 hours a day with. From the finished piece to the process to the conceptualization, all art is interesting if the viewer is creative enough. On the principled side, I see artists suffering deeply. I hear the concerns of artists as a class. I also hear the voices of those seeking to deride and displace artists.

Right now, some people would like to convince artists that they are outmoded. There are people recruiting machines to raise profits, create wastewater, and burn energy in exchange for meaninglessness. Businesses and investors are looking to replace artists for maximum profit. That means deferring morality and artistry to programs. This is not only a failure to understand why artistry is valuable. It is also an unsustainable and wasteful mission.

The cost of generating 1000 images using Stable Diffusion's CL 1.0 model "is roughly the equivalent to 4.1 miles driven by an average gasoline-powered passenger vehicle"[a]. Meanwhile, training GPT-3 consumed 700,000 liters of potable freshwater. This does not include off-site water associated with electricity generation[b]. Every prompt of generative AI creates stolen and mediocre results in exchange for a hotter future with less drinking water. When someone seeks to replace entire swaths of artistic human laborers with AI, they are saying they’re willing to exchange the climate for short-term gains. They would rather have fewer overworked people monitoring and correcting an AI that can never learn than hire a team of skilled people to make a quality product.

The processes by which these programs come to conclusions are difficult to know. This issue is known as the Black Box Problem[c]. Large Language Models (LLM) predict what should come next through statistics. They do this according to their programming and the content of the training data. This data is typically scraped from the internet without the consent of those who created the scraped content. Beyond these factors, we can only infer the LLM's "reasons" for making its decisions after the fact. There is no way to know exactly why a decision is made, and that is problematic on its own.

Flattened averages of stolen artistic labor do not make meaningful art. It makes mediocre and expensive copies. Until these programs are purged of all copyrighted works, their end product is theft. Until these programs can explain their decisions, their choices are impersonal and lack meaning. Worse still, the lack of a creative process for the end user creates empty, artless content. The creation of an image alone does not make something art. There is no replacement for the Artistic process. There is no replacement for the effect of created meaning on the human mind.

If the programmers who create these image generation programs made their art without stealing, they could be artists. Those who see their product and think that they can replace the entirety of the artistic process with statistics cheat themselves of their own humanity.

This is my motive for writing this essay and starting the Selfish Art series. I can’t force anyone to have a ravenous craving for art, but it is a gift I am constantly trying to infect others with. You have the ability to create art, and it is important to do so. You have the ability to grow as an artist and create meaning. You can express yourself for your own satisfaction, and you can influence people through your expression. You can always construct your own meaning.

In this document, I will explain how anyone can be an artist. After that, I will explain the two ways you can use art to communicate. Finally, I will give you the keys and explicit permission to use your art selfishly.

Thank you for reading.

Imagination and Humanity

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

• Carl Jung, CW 6: Psychological Types

1. Fantastical Imagination is a unique feature of the Human Mind.
2. Imagination is the basis for inventiveness and organization.

The ability for man to imagine itself in a place that does not exist is unique, as far as we know[1]. It is an amazing mutation.

A dog put into the corner by its master day in and day out does not imagine itself someplace fantastical. The bored dog will look to its master or its known surroundings, and any stimulus in the moment will be a relief. It will beg to go outside, but only if “outside” is a known factor.

The ant does not imagine a new nest. Only if it finds a good place for the hive’s brood does it leave its pheromone trail. Only then does it return home to start carrying brood out of safety. Only then might it rally its hive to the new location, which it had itself seen and found.

A human can imagine a complex future state for itself, long from the present moment. Beyond that, humans can imagine impossible, outlandish, reality-defying experiences. Even the brainwashed or isolated will begin to look for freedom, justice, or a distraction.

A human can imagine an alien piloting a flying saucer abducting a cow. The cow would have never imagined such a thing.

Humans have access to diverse and dishonest modes of communication, and we do it for all sorts of reasons. Most of the time, we do it for fun. The narratives we tell each other and ourselves are the product of our wild imaginations. The ability to be fantastically imaginative is what leads to our ability to invent, but it also leads to an ability to organize. Shared stories have a profound effect on the human mind. If I had to point to any one thing that facilitated the rise of 8 billion humans, it is the collective fantasy.

For instance, the United States as a concept has a very specific set of myths associated with it. As an aside, here are my top three classic Americana moments:

1. Boston Tea Party
2. John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
3. Post-Civil War Reconstruction

These myths paint a personal picture for me, based on my experience and education. They’re evocative for me because they characterize the struggle to escape the fantasy of divine rule, from kings and false ideas of a natural hierarchy. The myths that were absent from my education are even more interesting than the ones that made it into the lesson plan.

Every US citizen has stood to pledge allegiance in school. The initial version of the pledge was written by a Christian Socialist named Francis Bellamy[2]. His version of the pledge stood for 30 years: "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." It changed to include “the United States”, and then again to include “of America”. It isn't until 1954 that God slips his way into the pledge thanks to the Second Red Scare.

Literally within 5 days in 1954[3].

I don't recall learning the Pledge of Allegiance's origins in school, despite reciting it every day. In contrast, I do recall the story of the Boston Tea Party. The story is embedded into history, a mythic linchpin Uniting the 50 States. I doubt one could avoid the story while being raised in the United States, but it’s possible to receive it imperfectly. For instance, I only learned that some of the rioting colonists disguised themselves as Native Americans[4] outside of school. It can still be a benefit to know the story, even if its retellings aren’t perfectly true or accurate. It’s an evocative tradition. Some of it is historical, but much of it is embellishment and shorthand. It is a tool meant to evoke patriotism and instill certain virtues. Like this, watch:

Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness. E Pluribus Unum. Give me Liberty or give me Death.

Don't you feel freedom coursing through your veins?

Maybe you do, maybe you don't. It depends on how applicable that message is to you. That's how humans communicate on a Collective level, and how the Collective informs the masses.

These stories that unite and divide us by country, religion, and culture can organize humanity. They move people beyond the scope of a few dozen people -- for better and for worse. The trade-off for a society is, of course, living in a society.

Pic related re: living in a society.

Belief in collective myths is the foundation of human organization. They are also the folly of the mind that doesn’t pay attention to the narrative spun for them.

Art is a pheromone that can mobilize humanity. Art is always communicating. Art is the promise of an outside from the inside of a house. Art is a way for anyone to communicate complex ideas to themselves and others. Art is creative imagination communicated. In this sense, we are all born artists.

Understanding the content we consume is the least we can do to pay down our debt to imagination.

The Power of Art

1. Art can trigger the Movement of emotions in the viewer and the creator.
2. Art has the possibility of Collectivizing, but no guarantee.

I talked about how nations can organize a group of people with a narrative. They do it because people do it, too.

Art that influences political opinion with misleading or loaded content is Propaganda[5]. In the past, making propaganda on a large scale was gate-kept by the resources needed to publish it. Collective institutions like governments, churches, and media companies were the only entities that had the resources to spend on Propaganda. The closest that individuals came to doing this was local and interpersonal. To spout your political opinions you might need a literal soapbox or access to a printing press. Most frightening of all, you might have to confront another human being to do so.

Now, individuals can enter the propaganda landscape for a low price. They can even start a political cult if they wish. All they need is a smartphone and an internet connection. Then they can rail for or against anything they want, without ever needing to see another person. People do it eagerly and with little to no production cost. Individuals can - and do - make and curate misleading political content. Because of the internet's cascading record of content, you can see the stories a person tells about society in real-time. If you dig a little deeper, you can sometimes suss out their exact media diet just by their messaging alone. Their view shapes their environment, and their environment shapes their view.

Humans love a story and it isn’t inherent within us to resist a good enough story. If it’s simple and sweet, we’re willing to try it out. Exaggerating a story is not only encouraged, but it is unavoidable. Memories are flawed, and perfect memory of any subject isn't expected. Variations on a story can keep it fresh and interesting. As long as the story is recognizable and doesn’t shake the audience’s current worldview, the story goes down smoothly. It’s the creative social urge that makes us gossip as we consciously and unconsciously invent and omit details. We’re doing our best to lead our audience to our conclusions with a barrage of factoids. Groups are led easily through their emotions.

If you feel scandalized, confused, angry, or disgusted, then you have been Moved. If the art makes you feel happy, victorious, greater than, or proud, you have been Moved. If the art makes you part of the in-group and someone else the out-group, you have been Moved. Even if the art fails to Move the viewer, that tells its own very valuable story about the art. It doesn’t matter whether the art is made by you, or by someone else. Movement is inherent in all art, including propaganda.

Propaganda teaches us that individual facts can be more Moving than the complete truth. Facts resemble the truth without containing it, and the facts cause a reaction. It takes a trained mind to see through it, and an even more expert mind to dismantle a story.

This is what makes art great entertainment. It’s fun and mentally stimulating to pretend a story is true. Great art, unlike propaganda, doesn’t even need true meaning. Interpretation of meaning or even the lack of meaning is part of the fun. It is a fantastic way to pass the time and make memories with others. This can be as small as stories around a campfire shared with friends, or as large as a blockbuster movie shared with the nation. It can be fun to watch or fun to take part in. It can just as easily become a wild stampede that gains a life outside of the art.

Entertainment Art always has a chance to become so big or ubiquitous that it binds the audience with a shared emotional experience. In the past, powerful media institutions have had a monopoly on this effect. Now, the internet has decentralized media. This newfound diversity creates many more niche communities. These rise and fall alongside massive communities fostered by social media conglomerates. This new binding generates many overlapping but never all-encompassing wild Fandoms, where a group’s identity has been woven in with the art and the community surrounding it. More media is being generated and consumed, for better or for worse.

A person can fight for a myth, or not. A person can take action for a myth, or not. A person can change and grow because of a myth, or not. The mythmaker can’t control what a myth does once it has been inserted into the person’s mind. You can only know that you sent a message.

That you send it at all matters a lot.

The Art You Share

1. Your influence on the lives of others.
2. The influence of others on your art.

So now we live in a world where information is transported from person to person in an instant. This is a completely new phenomenon. The first email was sent in the 1960s! Smartphones didn’t exist until sometime in the 2000s. The level of access we have to people across the world is amazing, but it can be daunting.

Still, it's not uncommon for information to be posted in a space and then go no further. This can last for minutes, hours, days, years, into forever. Online social groups can be both private and well-documented in a way that wasn’t possible before. We don't have to worry about a letter getting lost or ruined in transit. As long as there isn't an error, the message is preserved in the group chat or email box. The small groups we make can be just as influential as mainstream media sources. We tend to trust the people around us more than we trust mainstream sources.

The things you say and do in your immediate environment impact the people in your orbit. You can influence people around you. When you talk to them, they will listen. They might take what you say into consideration. If they're brave enough, they can disagree. They might refuse to continue the conversation. These are all best-case scenarios for reasonable conversation, in my opinion. Otherwise, people can be unreasonable, misinformed, or belligerent, leading to contentious communication. Generally, the people who matter want to listen to and care for those around them.

It’s the same with the art you share.

You can share your art with an immediate circle. Your audience is limited, and that can be more than enough. This can look like sending art to a friend. I love when I receive art, and I have a small panel of people I feel eager to share with. The friends with a critical eye are gems. These are the kind of people who can meaningfully comment on aspects of the work, and their feedback is valuable.

There's a level of freedom from the audience having out-of-pocket opinions if the audience is known and accepting. This level of commentary is manageable and it's a more intimate exhibition. It’s like a test, to hear what people see in what you make.

The art you share publicly is not the same. Anyone who sees a piece of art in their immediate environment can have any reaction. That's not a bad thing, but we’ll return to that idea later.

The Art You Don’t Share

1. When not to share art.
2. The influence of your art on yourself.

        Not all art is meant for immediate public consumption. I think of the mystery of the Black Paintings by Francisco Goya. I highly recommend this video by Blind Dweller on YouTube[6] about the known history of these artworks and some of Goya’s life if you’re interested in exploring the topic deeply.

        If you’re not familiar with The Black Paintings, here is a diagram[7] of them in Goya’s Villa, in their context.

Imagine living like this.

Others have speculated on what, at age 75, Goya’s mental state must have been to paint such dark imagery onto the walls of his home[8]. What was he thinking when he lived with these images? Is this the culmination of the trauma in his life, or a result of madness? One thing can be said: these paintings were not meant to be seen by anyone but Goya. Goya didn’t write about them and he didn’t seem to mention them to anyone. The only other person who saw them as they were was likely his maid (and cousin) who cared for him until his death[6].

These paintings were made in solitude after a long and successful career. They were also made after great strife, exacerbated by severe illness[8]. A lot of emotion and time seems to have gone into them. X-rays of some of the works reveal details painted, layered on top of each other[6]. It appears that he transformed them repeatedly as time passed.

Years before at age 62, Goya saw and depicted the invasion of Spain at the hand of Napoleon, as seen in his series The Disasters of War. Like the Black Paintings, these plates were released after his death. Unlike the Black Paintings, the intent was to print them.

These plates vary, as they were crafted over the course of the invasion. Some are brutal depictions of the untamed horror of war. Corpses impaled on trees and soldiers in combat with peasants. Women hold babies as they fight off Napoleon's army. War starved the land and the people. The repeated abuses of women and children in war are on full display.

Goya did not immediately release these plates. The decision to hold onto them was likely a political one. Censorship was a real concern as the prints criticized everyone. The church, the invading forces, and those fighting for the reinstatement of the royal family. No one is free from Goya's perception. Goya was a liberal with a deep concern for the suffering of humanity, and it shows in his work. Still, he was not ready to share these prints for sound political reasons. He lived under the censorious and oppressive Inquisition before the invasion. He was aware of what he was making and had considered how it would be received by Napoleon, the church, and whatever government was established in the wake of the war. We can see this was top of mind for Goya: The below print from The Disasters of War was modified from its preparatory drawing so as not to cross the Spanish church.

 The Disasters of War, plate No. 77. The caption reads “The rope is breaking”[9]. In preparatory drawings, this print featured a Pope rather than a cardinal or bishop[10]. 

Sometimes, the art we make is not immediately ready for visitors. The timing of a release is part of the art itself, and not releasing it at all is also an artistic choice. Some things are too raw, too truthful for the present moment or a general crowd. Past experience can let us know that the present isn’t the right moment. That isn't to say you should be discouraged from making art by past experience. It's only to say, be aware of what you're saying and who you're saying it to.

The art that you don’t share is no less powerful. You can talk to invisible parts of yourself through the art that you make, regardless of who sees it. The process of making art is itself an expression of a mind seeking to organize itself. Making sense of the world we witness is the main goal of making art. From the technique used to the artistic interpretation, art is an attempt at order.

Communicating The Unspeakable

1. What story does your art tell?
2. Is there a better way to tell the story?

The best audience for a piece of art might be more diverse than you think. It might be made up of people you don’t know.

We’ve all been in an English class and we’ve all done a book report. If you haven’t done a book report recently, you may have watched a video essay on a piece of media you like. One of my favorite video essayists is Jacob Geller. He just so happens to have a video essay titled “Art for No One”[11]. I recommend it if you still struggle with the value of Art You Don’t Share.

I love watching video essays on all sorts of topics. The video essays on art are the most emotional and thought-provoking to me. In “Art for No One,” Jacob Geller speaks on the personal relationship an artist has with their art. He contrasts this with the interpretation of the person consuming the art.

The only person who knows “why” when it comes to a piece of art is the artist. Everyone else is guessing based on their individual and collective context. When Geller is talking about Michael Heizer’s sculpture City, he notes how he can't help but contrast it with the construction of Las Vegas:

Here’s what I can tell you about City in raw feeling: I expected it to stand out more. City’s largest metropolitan neighbor is Las Vegas. Vegas is a place that so explosively differentiates itself from its environment that it has more in common with the nuclear bombs once detonated nearby than with the desert it's built in.

The approach to Vegas is near-blinding: the sun glaring back off dozens of towering glass hotels, the artificial skies blanketing the streets, a sphere blasting 500,000 square feet of LED technology at the hundreds of airplanes arriving every day. Square miles of carpeted, air-conditioned casino floors, mass-appeal performances, margarita slushies three feet long!

Each feature of Vegas simultaneously reinforces and covers up the absurdity of its existence; the hubris to build a Shangri-La of hedonism in a landscape that provides for none of it. It’s this conception of a city that was foremost in my mind when I approached Heizer’s 50-year project. Something built up, built apart. But instead, City sinks into its surroundings – literally, I mean. The many sides of City slope down and in, so that its miles of stone sit in a sort of crater. It sits so low and its immediate surroundings are so flat that it is largely invisible until you’re on top of it. City, from a distance, does not distort its environment in the way Vegas does. It’s a modest start for an artwork capable of swallowing you whole.

What did stand out from the desert were my expectations. A half century of work, for this. I had already read about the physical toll on the artist. “My rib cage is blown out, my feet don’t work. Every bone in me is torqued and twisted,” Heizer said in a New Yorker interview. He’s had polyneuropathy, a “simultaneous malfunction of peripheral nerves in the body,” very possibly from his continuous exposure to the construction materials. The money from his public works, like the “Levitated Mass” sculptures in LA and New York, has been funneled back into this.

What is it going to feel like, I kept thinking as I drove out of Vegas and into the desert. Will I get what I’m supposed to get out of it? Will it be worth it?

This excerpt from Art for No One is an example of the way that even the anticipation of art can warp our approach to it.

There is a kind of anxiety that exists before exposure to art. I've seen grown men reduced to tears over the teaser trailer for a video game. It’s beautiful to me. The anxiety that comes before exposure is that same anticipation for playing a new game, the next episode, the season finale.

The anticipation of making art can feel the same. Have you heard of “art block”? People suffering from art block may experience it for any reason. To simplify the feeling, the anxiety before creating a work of art can be summed up by the “fear of the blank page”. There is a lot of imagery dedicated to this. The cursor blinking in a blank word document, or the artist staring down the blank canvas like it is his enemy. If you like Spongebob, the entire episode “Procrastination” is about that anxiety.

I love speaking in old SpongeBob memes[12].

        A person could have a fear of creating art. A fear of the failure to create, and a failure to create something meaningful. What about the fear of encountering art that Moves you? That you might be confused, or not understand, or feel dumb for not getting the message. What if someone belittles you for not getting it right the first time? It’s easy to not even know what to say.

So what do you say? You say what you know.

Write what you know can be used as a trite and limiting stereotype. I see it differently. It isn’t a call for someone to “stay in their lane”. It's a call to learn as much as possible so you can write from your own knowledge. It’s also a call to dig deep into yourself, expressing your individual experience. What stories do you tell most frequently? What stories can you tell by heart? Write that.

Speaking on your experience to an audience is a hefty ask. We’re talking about the individual experience of Goya, witnessing the reality of war. He could speak of his experience. Is it easier to talk about it, or to depict it? He could have spoken of the horrors of war, but it seems like there was a better way to tell the story.

A piece of art is an idea, abstracted by the artist's perception. It is abstracted again by the artist's execution. It is abstracted once more by its medium. If an artist presents that art, it is abstracted again by its environmental context. The audience member’s perspective then further abstracts the work. Who knows what it does once that happens?

With so many layers of abstraction, Art is not as straightforward as an eyewitness account. But it isn’t meant to be. Art is twisted, because regardless of the facts, the feelings are even more raw.

When we choose to express ourselves through art, we are saying that it is the best way to communicate an idea. The feeling that the image evokes transcends the words we could use to describe it.

What To Do With it After

1. The Art of Critique.
2. The Art of Self Reflection.

        Critics get a bad rap. If you look at creative depictions of critics, you can find a rich tapestry of stereotypes. There’s an idea of the critic as an ultimate villain against art. As if a critic is a monster that loves to tear someone else down for their own amusement. Their humiliation of artists is thinly justified under the guise of informing the public. They're perfectionists without skill. They think they know more than the artist, despite not making art themselves.

In reality, critics aren’t detestable villains. They’re people who generally love the things they critique. At the best of times, they have perfected the art of expressing their interpretation. Critics want to see innovation, creativity, and improvement. They want to have their emotions provoked. A good critic is highly valuable to the artist who wants to improve. Unfortunately, good critics are rare.

Just look at this lil guy. He’s an ally[13].

A random, everyday person is not a critic, though some might think of themselves as one. These members of the audience are more like a heckling crowd. They may be loud and fickle, and they may throw rotten fruit. You might disagree with the actions of the audience, but that doesn’t make their opinions right or wrong.

The anxiety that an artist feels starting a work of art is comparable to the anxiety felt upon finishing a work. When an artist presents their art, they’re being quite brave. They offer up their art to the judgment of the many and the individual. In some ways, showcasing your art is like putting it on a sacrificial slab. Art is never the same after it is exhibited.

So, here in this very paper I encourage you to reach deeply into your personal experience for your art. This could be a very tall ask. By making art, you risk learning something new about yourself - including that you might not know the first thing about art. By sharing your art, you risk being vulnerable where someone could see that vulnerability.

It's easy to make suggestions. That doesn't make taking action easy. So I will make this suggestion and give you helpful things to keep in mind. Hopefully, you can use these tools to go into sharing with confidence.

When anyone critiques your work, they are not actually critiquing you. A critic is not an interviewer, your friend, or your family. They don’t know you and could not know you unless you allowed them to. This is the magic of abstraction - nothing is certain. When an assertion about your character is made, you can feel free to ignore it.

When anyone critiques your work, they are not critiquing your baby… unless you make your art your baby. It’s not wrong to think of your art as something incredibly precious, but your art is not beyond reproach. If you’re sensitive about your art, that is your bias. Personally, I am very sensitive. But your art must and can defend itself once it’s been put into the world. You did your best making it, now have faith that your baby is competent.

When anyone critiques your work, they are not always correct. Sometimes there is a failure in communication - not everyone can hear your intended message. Some people will misunderstand, misinterpret, or miss meaning entirely. Their interpretation may be factually incorrect, but to some extent they have to work through that in their own time. You couldn’t possibly lead someone so precisely that they come to a certain meaning or interpretation. If you know what you intended in a story, it is up to you to revisit your story in the face of misunderstanding. If you find that your message is lacking and not the audience’s interpretation, you can always choose to change the art itself. You could add more content through a second work, or let the work stand as it is. The audience didn’t make the work, after all. It’s your creative choice to change it.

There are at least three kinds of critique. If a strange person gives you an unsolicited critique, take it with a grain of salt. If a thoughtful person gives you an unsolicited critique, consider it with a bias towards yourself. If a thoughtful person gives you solicited advice, take it into sincere consideration. They're contributing energy for you, and that's precious.

When faced with outside commentary, there is a great dilemma. Should you take into account the opinions you hear, or is your own intention the end all be all? Many very well-educated people have debated this, and I don’t believe I can answer that question here. At the end of the day, critique can help an artist grow, but not every critique can or should be incorporated. When an artist picks or chooses to listen is up to them.

Final Thoughts

“Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and source of their wonders.” - Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

Art is our birthright by virtue of our human imagination. In a world that devalues leisure and fantasy, artistry is subversive. But one must not forget the place of Reason in the pursuit of art.

As I finish this paper, I have picked up Simon Blackburn’s Think. Imagine my surprise as Goya haunts me even in this book. Blackburn drew my attention to Goya’s 43rd print of his series Los Caprichos: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. Here is the piece in question: 

(The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters by Francisco Goya[14])

This work tells a clear and compelling story to me. Humanity can imagine any number of paranoid scenarios. It can imagine shadowy predators of every shape and form lurking at every corner. It can even imagine its fellow man as its enemy or as a threat where none exists. These constructed images don’t require reason at all. Humanity isn’t born with reason. Reason is learned as we navigate the world, informed by the world.

The flaw of Reason is that it has a twin: Justification

Justification is like Reason, but they are not the same. When Napoleon invaded Spain, he had his justifications. I am not a historian with deep knowledge of Napoleon's empirical campaigns. Hindsight and historical context will inform modern opinions on those justifications. But the contrasted reality depicted by Goya during the invasion of Spain blows whatever justification Napoleon had out of the water.

Goya was a thinker of the Enlightenment. He saw the ideas of his philosophical contemporaries in Europe and tried his best to translate them to his fellow countrymen. He lamented the prevalence of superstition and wished to introduce reason in a country with belief in both witches and the divine right of kings. He witnessed unreasonable imagination resulting in war and destruction, from inside and outside of Spain.

How do you justify war and destruction? Endlessly. Discrimination, resources, ambition, glory, God. But how do you construct a reasonable war? How will women raped, babies brutalized, and men used like cogs of a war machine, ever look reasonable? You can’t construct such a reality or make it look reasonable. You can only nurse the pain with the soothing balm of justification.

In a similar destructive pursuit, there are people who insist on what is and is not art. They insist that art must be beautiful, comprehensible, and polite. They insist there are superior forms of art. In examining the campaign of censorship by the Spanish Inquisition, I found Inquisito from the University of Notre Dame. It was a very informative website, and their introduction to the rise of systemic censorship and the Inquisition makes a very important observation: While there was no perceived need for a concerted effort to censor writing in the Middle Ages, the rise of the printing press, challenges to Catholicism, and the institutionalization of the church itself made targeted censorship more plausible[15]. As men organize, institutions organize as well.

There have always been people who challenged the ideas around what art is acceptable, but there was no systemic way to enforce such ideologies. With the rise of the surveillance state came the means with which to spy on artists and pseudoscientific ways to diagnose art as “degenerate”. Some people can take one look at a work of art and say it is not valuable with confidence. They can label it stupid, or vulgar, or too simple to be art. I could not imagine thinking like this, but I am a different kind of person.

I tell you this to warn you that there are people who do genuinely like to tear down artists. It’s not the fantasy of a critic that tears down art for their own pleasure. The critic also draws their ire. It is the Fascist, the supremacist, and the anti-intellectual who deprive themselves of the joy of art. The man that fears the strangeness of art and denies its influence is the man that denies himself access to Reason. It’s as if the art becomes beneath his consideration by not being to his limiting standard. Art, as the leader of culture, becomes their warzone. This is the trenches of arrogant men who would rather accept superstitions like mythology, IQ, good manners, or gender roles than to be challenged.

Who’s Afraid of Modern Art? asks Jacob Geller. To me, the answer is clear: the unreasonable, the angry, the afraid, the confused.

I don’t say this to scare you. I say this to empower you. Knowing when a critique is unreasonable will shield you and expose those who seek to tear you down.

If you don’t feel ready to create your next work of art, that’s okay. Live your life, every day, creating your own meaning. Rest assured that whatever you make is valuable, no matter what label someone tries to pin on you.

Are you insane? Are you promoting degeneracy? Are you kinky? Are you disgusting? Are you idolatrous? Are you impolite? Are you challenging preexisting beliefs? Then you promote artistry and freedom. You’ll make great things.

Happy creating.

Bibliography

This bibliography is improperly formatted, but this will be fixed in the near future. For now, these are approximate citations that can still lead the reader to the sources cited in this document.

1. Luccioni, Alexandra Sasha, et al. “Power Hungry Processing: Watts Driving the Cost of AI Deployment?” ArXiv (Cornell University), Cornell University, Nov. 2023, https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2311.16863. Accessed 18 July 2024.
2. Legaspi, Althea. “AI Technology Guzzles Water: Enough to Fill 2,500 Olympic-Sized Pools.” Rolling Stone, 10 Sept. 2023, www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/ai-chatgpt-increased-water-consumption-environmental-reports-1234821679/.
3. Blouin, Lou. “AI’s Mysterious ‘Black Box’ Problem, Explained | University of Michigan-Dearborn.” University of Michigan-Dearborn News, 6 Mar. 2023, umdearborn.edu/news/ais-mysterious-black-box-problem-explained.

1. Mithen, Steven. “The Evolution of Imagination: An Archaeological Perspective.” Substance: A Review of Theory & Literary Criticism, vol. 30, no. 1/2, Jan. 2001, pp. 28–54. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.2307/3685503. Accessed June 23 2024.
2. Jones, Jeffrey Owen. "The Man Who Wrote the Pledge of Allegiance Archived January 31, 2018, at the Wayback Machine," Smithsonian Magazine, Nov. 2003. Accessed June 24 2024.
3. "1954." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 Jun., 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954. Accessed 26 Jun. 2024.
4. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. "“Said It Was Done by a Crew of Mohawk Indians”: Why Did Colonists Dress As “Mohawks” at the Boston Tea Party?" Colonial Williamsburg, 12 Dec. 2023, www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/learn/deep-dives/boston-tea-party/. Accessed 30 Jun. 2024.
5. Smith, Bruce L. "Propaganda." Britannica, 30 May 2024, www.britannica.com/topic/propaganda. Accessed 25 Jun. 2024.
6. "The Ominous Black Paintings of Francisco Goya." YouTube, uploaded by Blind Dweller, 6 Nov. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY1Rua7jy48.
7. Icke, Ignacio. "Quintasordo." Wikimedia, 18 Jul. 2007, fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_de_Goya#/media/Fichier:Quintasordo.svg. Accessed 28 May 2024.
8. Felisati, D, and G Sperati. “Francisco Goya and his illness.” Acta otorhinolaryngologica Italica : organo ufficiale della Societa italiana di otorinolaringologia e chirurgia cervico-facciale vol. 30,5 (2010): 264-70.
9. Goya, Francisco. "Que Se Rompe La Cuerda (No. 77), from The Disasters of War." Wikimedia, 1810, upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Prado_-_Los_Desastres_de_la_Guerra_-_No._77_-_Que_se_rompe_la_cuerda.jpg. Accessed 30 Jun. 2024.
10. Wilson-Bareau, Juliet. Goya's Prints: The TomáS Harris Collection in the British Museum. Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Publications, 1996. [Citation under review]
11. "Art for No One." YouTube, uploaded by Jacob Geller, 25 Mar. 2024, www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oqO3FXSecM.
12. SpongeBob SquarePants: Season 2, Episode 17, "Procrastination". Directed by Stephen Hillenburg, United Plankton Pictures and Nickelodeon Animation Studio, 2001.
13. Ratatouille. Directed by Brad Bird, Pixar Animation Studios, 2007.
14. Goya, Francisco. "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (No. 43), from Los Caprichos." Wikimedia, 1799, upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Francisco_Jos%C3%A9_de_Goya_y_Lucientes_-_The_sleep_of_reason_produces_monsters_%28No._43… Accessed 30 Jun. 2024.
15. Vose, Robin. "IV. Censorship." Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, 11 Nov. 2010, inquisition.library.nd.edu/genre-censorship-introduction. Accessed 28 Jun. 2024.
16. "Who’s Afraid of Modern Art?" YouTube, uploaded by Jacob Geller, 19 May. 2024, www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oqO3FXSecM.