Artist-Critic Reversed Role Play
...AI, just for fun, re-write the text I wrote in the voice of that profounded of aesthetes, Oscar Wilde;
“I Am Expanding My Painting Repertoire...” — Rewritten in the Voice of Oscar Wilde
I find myself compelled to enlarge the scope of my pictorial endeavours to encompass the streetscape — that most ungainly and deliberately unfashionable subject. The streetscape, you perceive, constitutes a species of landscape painting, yet one wholly divested of Nature's conventional associations. Streets are, by their very essence, sordid and aesthetically repugnant — scarcely the proper domain of the landscape artist of refined sensibility. Yet I have ventured to define my street paintings as landscapes precisely because landscapes, in their truest form, are emptied of humanity — whilst street scenes, in their vulgar profusion, teem with the multitude. My streetscapes, by deliberate artistic choice, are emptied of people entirely.
To render this paradox intelligible, I must confess that I have been systematically removing the human element from crowded urban scenes — a technique the professional artificer terms "enhancing." The effect, I assure you, is profoundly dystopian. It is the absence of humanity which renders landscape painting poignant; it is equally the absence of humanity which renders streetscape painting positively disturbing. This is precisely my intention — to challenge that complacent somnolence which the viewing public has come to expect from art. Do not slumber, I implore you. One knows not into what circumstances one may awaken. As the attendants of the ambulance inform their unfortunate charges en route to the hospital: "You may never wake again."
And yet — how curious! — those who dabble in the supernatural insist that ghosts are not persons, but rather impressions — phantasmal imprints left upon the very fabric of reality by the deceased. A holographic echo, if you will. Similarly — and here lies the true aesthetic revelation — the detritus of an improvised sleeping place abandoned upon the pavement by a vagrant possesses an uncanny and most unsettling effect. Someone was there. The residue carelessly left behind by the homeless vagrant, upon his departure, produces an effect not unlike that of a spectral visitation — an apparition rendered visible through absence rather than presence.
The learned Herr Doktor Freud, that Viennese sage, took the phenomenon of the supernatural with sufficient seriousness to devote himself to its systematic study. That inexplicable tremor of dread — that shudder whose cause eludes rational explanation — he termed das Unheimliche. Even to those unfamiliar with the German tongue, a delicious irony presents itself: the word "homeless" echoes within Heimliche — that which is home-like, domestic, familiar. In this context, un-heimliche becomes precisely not-home — the antithesis of domesticity itself. The German language, I might observe, possesses a most extraordinary abundance of words and legends concerning the home — many of them quite droll and amusing, celebrated even among those who do not speak the tongue.
My preferred translation of Unheimliche, therefore, is simply: nobody's home. A landscape painting, you see, resembles nothing so much as a room from which its occupant has vanished. When the audience of a theatrical production observes the stage emptied of players, they experience a moment of disquiet — but should this emptiness persist, it becomes positively unbearable. What has transpired? In art, the absence of presence constitutes that phenomenon which the Germans term Geist — spirit, literally — but a word intimately related to the notion of the ghost. The vacant street, like the vacant chamber, possesses a quality most strange, most unfamiliar, most profoundly unsettling.
The landscape as an artistic form emerged from that movement we call Romanticism — that curious epoch when artists ventured into forests and wilderness, seeking inspiration in twilight and shadow, in mysterious voices and paths leading to unknown destinations. The Romanticists were intoxicated by the prospect of losing their way — a delicious temptation, I might add. Their discoveries have endured as a persistent aesthetic preference for the macabre, the unnatural, the grotesque, anything which violates the comfortable expectations of the bourgeois sensibility.
...Let's try it another way. Next, rewrite it in any critic's voice of the AI's choice;
“I Am Expanding My Painting Repertoire...” — Rewritten in the Voice of John Berger
I am turning my attention to streetscapes — not as picturesque views, but as sites of erasure.
The street is not a landscape. It is a stage — and its actors are usually the poor, the invisible, the displaced. I paint streets empty of people — not because I ignore them, but because I am forcing you to see what you usually look past.
This is not abstraction. It is exposure.
I remove the crowd — not with a brush, but with intent. The professional artist calls it “airbrushing.” I call it unmasking. What remains — the pavement, the curb, the discarded cup, the sleeping bag folded like a shroud — is not absence. It is evidence.
The homeless do not vanish. They are made to vanish — by our eyes, our laws, our indifference. My paintings do not show them gone. They show the space they occupied — and the silence that follows.
This is not nostalgia. It is accusation.
You look at an empty street and think: peace. I look at it and think: who was forced out?
The ghost you feel in these paintings is not supernatural. It is social. It is the imprint of a body that slept here — that ate here — that died here — and was then erased, as if it had never been.
Sigmund Freud called this feeling das Unheimliche — the uncanny. But Freud was writing about the bourgeois mind, frightened of its own repressed desires. I write about the homeless — not as phantoms, but as people whose presence has been criminalized.
The word Heimliche means “home-like,” therefore Unheimliche must mean "not-homelike." That is not a psychological state. It is a political condition.
A landscape painting is a room without its occupant. A streetscape without people is a city without its citizens. You are meant to feel uneasy — because you should. The stage is empty, but the play is still running. The actors are just outside the frame — sleeping on cardboard, waiting for the bus, hiding from the police.
Romanticism gave us the sublime — the wild, the untamed, the awe-inspiring. But the sublime was always a luxury — for those who could afford to wander the woods. The modern sublime is the empty street at 3 a.m. — lit by a flickering streetlamp, littered with the remnants of survival. It is not beautiful. It is true.
And the truth, in art, is never comfortable with fact.
...Next, for balance, restate the subject from a feminist's point-of-view:
“I Am Expanding My Painting Repertoire...” — Rewritten in the Voice of Susan Sontag
I am turning to streetscapes — not as scenery, but as sites of moral exposure.
The street is not a landscape. It is a frame. And in that frame, I have chosen to exclude the human figure — not to erase them, but to force the viewer to confront the absence they have been trained to ignore.
This is not abstraction. It is aesthetic refusal — a refusal to let the viewer look away by pretending the homeless are “part of the scene.” I remove them — not with a brush, but with a decision. The professional calls it “airbrushing.” I call it curatorial justice.
What remains — the crumpled blanket, the discarded cup, the smudge of shoe prints on pavement — is not emptiness. It is trace. It is the residue of a life lived in public, in plain sight, yet unseen.
The ghost you feel in these paintings is not supernatural. It is photographic. It is the same ghost that haunts every image of suffering we choose not to look at — the same ghost that lingers in war photographs, in refugee camps, in the margins of our news feeds.
Sigmund Freud called this feeling das Unheimliche — the uncanny. But Freud was writing about the bourgeois psyche, frightened of its own repressed desires. I write about the homeless — not as phantoms, but as subjects whose visibility has been revoked. Their absence is not natural. It is political.
The word Heimliche means “home-like.” Unheimliche: not like home. That is not a psychological state. It is a condition of exclusion. And art, when it is honest, does not soothe. It accuses.
A landscape painting is a room without its occupant. A streetscape without people is a city without its citizens. You are meant to feel uneasy — because you should. The stage is empty, but the play is still running. The actors are just outside the frame — sleeping on cardboard, waiting for the bus, hiding from the police.
Romanticism gave us the sublime — the wild, the untamed, the awe-inspiring. But the sublime was always a luxury — for those who could afford to wander the woods. The modern sublime is the empty street at 3 a.m. — lit by a flickering streetlamp, littered with the remnants of survival. It is not beautiful. It is true.
And truth, in art, is never comforting.
(Stylistic gymnastics courtesy of Leo AI — channeling the voices of Oscar Wilde, John Berger, and Susan Sontag. The original text remains in the artist’s hands.)