No Task:

Sartre holds that the essential existential belief is "existence precedes essence," and not the other way around, as is the case with all other things in life (i.e. the paper cutter). Since we all know that there is no God, it follows that we were not created by any thing, much less for any purpose. But if we exist without a purpose--that is, if we have not been given a task--we are condemned to find our own purposes, our own tasks to carry out. 

David Shrigley's only task, apparently, is to fill the page, and I dare say that this philosophy carries over into each of our lives as well. With no grand scheme in mind, with no final plan or ultimate end for our lives, the task we create for ourselves may often feel as insignificant or as inconsequential as simply filling a page. Many of us have found this idea to be more pessimistic or depressing than it actually is, assuming that by "filling up the page" we are saying that we will all sit in tiny little desks in tiny little rows with our tiny little pencils, copy down words from a medical dictionary until we fill up both sides (the front and the back) of the page with our tiny little handwritings, sign the honor code like good boys and girls, and die. 

I am sorry to disenchant you, my friends, but there is so much more to existentialism than this. Existentialism, Sartre wants to tell you, is ultimately the most optimistic and humanistic philosophy available: do not become forlorn by the fact that your task is "merely" to fill a page. Instead, consider the possibilities. Fill it up with love poems, erase them, and fill it back up again. Cover it in stickers. Cover it cupcake sprinkles. Cover it in glitter glue. Trace the contours of your hand. Make that tracing a turkey. Wipe your ass with it. 

Write the opening lines of your novel. Write the heartbreaking conclusion. Draw every shape you know, then every shape you don't know. Fill the page with black marker; paint back over it in white. Flick some pink in there to be trendy. Make a Warhol. Make a Pollock. Make Friedrich Nietzsche's mustache. Copy "I will not be in bad faith" until your hand begins to cramp. Finish the rest of it with your left hand. Break out the old Spirograph. Blow your runny nose and fold the page over. 

Hell, go ahead prick your thumb and leave the bloody print there in the corner. No one will mind. In the end you will not have been asked to draw anything in particular. You will not have been graded for accuracy (there are no still-life mannequins), or even creativity. There are no grades, and if there is, they are completion grades, so do whatever you want. 

You cannot fail. 

You cannot fail.

You simply. cannot. fail.

So have at it.