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Do Artists Need a Mind’s Eye?
Dr Matthew MacKisack, University of Exeter
Do you have to see a picture in your mind before you can make one?
From the Renaissance on, writers on art often held up composing in the mind as the mark of a true artist: you form the whole work in your head, then carry it out. That idea survives today as a popular stereotype.
So how do artists with no mind’s eye work, and how do artists whose imagery is as vivid as seeing?
What the study found
Dr Matthew MacKisack and his colleagues staged an exhibition of work by artists at the two extremes of imagery, and asked the exhibitors how they work. They wrote it up as “Plural Imagination: Diversity in Mind and Making”, published in Art Journal in 2022.
An open call brought 65 responses, and the team chose 18 exhibitors: 12 with aphantasia and 6 with hyperphantasia, imagery as vivid as seeing. Some were professionals and some amateurs, some trained and some not.
The art itself showed little sign of the artist’s imagery. Artists with aphantasia made figurative and abstract work, in painting, video and sculpture, with no common theme.
The difference was in how they worked. Artists with aphantasia started outside their heads: from reference images or objects, from an existing picture, or from a few loose marks to respond to.
One laid down collage material without knowing what it would become, and only recognized the picture as it formed.
All six artists with hyperphantasia said their work began as an image in the mind. One spends hours, over days or months, composing a whole piece mentally before putting it on paper.
The authors conclude that artists make art in different ways, partly because their imagery differs, so no one way of making is the true one.
They call the findings preliminary: 18 artists who answered an open call can’t stand for artists in general, and a larger study is needed.
What you’ll take away
- Why “see it first, then make it” is one way of making art, not the way
- How artists with aphantasia begin: reference images, objects, loose marks
- Words for anyone told they’re “not visual enough” to make art
About Matthew
Dr Matthew MacKisack is a historian of art and culture and an honorary associate research fellow in the Cognitive Neurology Research Group at the University of Exeter. His work looks at how making art relates to the mind, and he co-curated Extreme Imagination, the 2019 exhibition the study grew from.