ASKING THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why are there no paintings in Star Wars?

In many of the Star Wars films, drawings and illustrations serve as MacGuffins to advance the story. The most famous example of this is the set of plans for the original Death Star. The schematic drawings for the moon-sized weapon appear on screen and fuel the plots of both Rogue One and A New Hope. Meanwhile, maps of secret locations are used to similar effect in Attack of the Clones, The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker.

While these images are utilitarian rather than purely artistic, they demonstrate the ability of the residents of this galaxy to conceive, execute and understand abstracted, two-dimensional representations of real-world, three-dimensional objects.

While I freely admit the possibility that a more eagle-eyed reader will be able to point to a painting that slipped my attention and appeared briefly in one or more of the big-screen Star Wars films, there’s no question that paintings have never been important to the stories. They are not talked about, reflected upon or even alluded to, at least not in the ways that we usually engage with this form of art. Given the presence of many other types of art in Star Wars movies, how can we explain this?

As the author goes on to note, there are plenty of matte paintings created by Industrial Light and Magic to expand the scope of a scene, and there were industrial artist Ralph McQuarrie’s brilliant pre-production paintings, but apparently rather than art on the wall, the Rebels and the denizens of the Empire prefer things purely holographic.