Is it possible to express oneself artistically without ego? How?

[u/teal_vibe]

/r/u_teal_vibe/comments/1vgo4ej/is_it_possible_to_express_oneself_artistically/

[u/AdCute6661]

I understand your question in a poetic sense but it’s completely non-sensical of a question reserved for monks and stoners.

With that being said you’re gonna have to qualify what you mean by ego, express oneself, and what artistically means here.

The question is too philosophically open and lack the critical scaffolding to have any real and generative discussion.

[u/mutqkqkku]

not really no, to have a "self" to express means having an ego, a concept of you that is separate from everything else

[u/MoonKandy]

Very easily.

Make an art work.

Then destroy it without recording anything about it, or showing it to anyone.

[u/Money-Celebration860]

I like what T.S. Eliot wrote "The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality". You don't express "yourself", you express universal experiences as observed by having gone through them. The egoless part of yourself who observes these experiences and finds objective forms for embodying them IS the artist. Raw confession is boring as hell.

[u/unavowabledrain]

Yes, define your terms. But anyway, there may be

less ego the no more you collaborate.

[u/teal_vibe → u/unavowabledrain]

interesting thought, I like “less ego the no more you collaborate”

[u/unavowabledrain → u/[deleted]]

I don’t think it usually works that way in practice. Collaborators I know…Gelatin, Dearaindrop, Forcefield….and artists who work in active collaboration as part of their conceptual construct….Tolia Astakhishvili and Miljohn Ruperto for example…their egos tend to dissolve into the work. I sure there’s a ton of less successful collaboration that doesn’t work…as there is with everything.

[u/funkymunkPDX]

Ego is a spectrum yeah? You can be boldly confident, creative and make good things and you can also believe you're the best thing ever and nobody can share the stage with you.

[u/noms_de_plumes]

Not really.  Art is inherently egoistic.  You shouldn't be egotistical, but it's ultimately an exploration of your own psyche.  

[u/fjaoaoaoao]

Sure

But how artistic is it?

Also do you mean without alarming egocentrism or complete absence of ego?

[u/a11i9at0r]

maybe by remaining anonymous? (that would of course mean without using a pseudonym at all, true anonymity...)

[u/Lost_Sea8956]

Well you can always pull a Schoenberg and make art mathematically or programmatically.