Against expressing yourself in art

A rant

A couple of omnipresent ideas about art drive me mad. Not because they are false, but because their importance is blown out of proportion. Here is one such idea: art is all about expressing your true self. I shudder when this is presented as the core job of the artist.

Imagine relaying this thesis to the builders of the Gothic cathedrals. They would look at you in utter astonishment. They did not express themselves. On the contrary, they saw the divine and converted it into mountains of geometry and cliffs of colored glass. They built the sublime out of rock and the joining of wills. They so successfully distilled universal aspects of beauty that practically every single human on earth, a near millennium later, cannot help but feel awe in their presence.

Or, do you think Bach’s fugues stand as pillars of human ingenuity because he maxed out on dumping personal quirks in the music? No. He perfected a craft, bringing to climax a long tradition of development across generations of composers—each improving upon the other in the discovery of technique and heuristic. This does not mean that Bach left no personality in his music. Of course he did—plenty of it. But leaving your personality in the art is the easy part. It happens just like you leave fingerprints.

But what, I hear you say, about the pioneer that establishes a genre? That ultimate artistic prize and glorious act of non-conformity. But here is the core fact: a genre’s establishment means that others followed the pioneer. The pioneer showed them green pastures of aesthetic whose value was quickly recognized. They discovered a new palette of pattern that blend well together—not just for the pioneer, but for multitudes of artists and beholders. This discovery of universality is the crowning achievement of the pioneer, well worth a beaming halo.

So, don’t strive to leave personality in your art. Your aesthetic compass guides your decisions—it will happen naturally. Instead, practice technique. By the time you master it, you will leave delicate fingerprints on your art, rather than smudges of bacon fat.