 What sorts of paintings will be hanging in the museums of the future? Agnieszka Pilat thinks we'll be looking at what she calls heroic portraits of machines, fine art renderings of the technology that freed the modern world from the bone-and-soul crushing labor that our parents and grandparents endured. Pilat's paintings, especially ones featuring SPOT, the Boston Dynamics robot dog, are sought after by Silicon Valley collectors drawn to her valorization of technology, a welcome alternative to the traditional demonization by artists of the man-made world. Her work is rich in callbacks to artists ranging from Da Vinci to Duchamp to Warhol, and she incorporates augmented reality to further highlight how technology shapes our perceptions. A sure sign of success, one of her paintings appears in the Matrix sequel released last year as a representation of art in the future. Born in Poland in 1973, Pilat remembers life under communism as an extended period of conformity and repression that ended almost immediately the moment that the Polish regime collapsed in 1989. She talks about how her father, able finally to operate his own shop, stopped drinking and built a prosperous bakery business. Pilat emigrated to the United States in the early 2000s, landing in San Francisco, where she encountered amazingly wealthy tech workers espousing the same collectivist ideas that had made her childhood so miserable. I was just really shocked, she recalls. I didn't realize that people still think that communism or socialism is a good idea. Moral outrage was growing within me and also a feeling that I need to protect America by telling people what it really means. Shortly after arriving in the States, Pilat stumbled across the work of another Eastern European immigrant. Though she didn't become an objectivist, Pilat responded viscerally to Ram's insistence that you have a right and a moral obligation to yourself to have a purpose and work towards the purpose as hard as you can. As her work gains in stature, Pilat is moving on to a new frontier, if not quite a final one. She's an artist in residence at Elon Musk's SpaceX, where she's looking forward to possibly producing super heroic portraits of machines in zero gravity. Reason talked with her in her New York studio about being upstage by a robot dog, why she wants everyone to remember what communism was really like, and how to best appreciate and protect the economic and cultural freedom we too often take for granted. Agnieszka Pilat, thanks for talking to reason. Thank you, Nick. Great to be here. So let's talk about Renaissance 2.0, a show that you had last fall. What are you trying to accomplish with portraits of machines? I generally describe it that I am a portrait painter, but to be relevant in today's story, the portrait you need to reflect whoever holds power. I like to say that if Andy Warhol were alive, he wouldn't be painting Marilyn Monroe, he'd be painting the machines. When you talk about that the machines hold power, how do you mean that? Sure, sure. I think I might probably call them like they're like benevolent dictators. So I think we are leaning to it and they have tremendous power in that sense, but it's by choice. I mean, the cell phone, we can turn it off anytime we want. So we choose to give them power. You say your patrons are actually the machines of the future. I work for the machine, not the man. Yes, my concept is that how I go to a museum today or you go to a museum today and you look at portraiture and you think these are my ancestors. I want to believe that if artificial intelligence and thinking machines progress 100 years from now, 200 years from now, they're going to come and look at the portraits I painted of all their machines and they're going to think these are our ancestors. So in that sense, I feel like I'm building Museum of the Future. One of the pieces of technology you've been working with for a while now is spot, the Boston Dynamics robot. Can you describe it? Sure. So a spot is what's technically is called quadruple robot or cobot, which is a robot that's meant to cooperate with humans. I describe it as a walking drone. It has built in artificial intelligence, but more so athletic intelligence means it really understands the environment very well. So it's got like sensors in its eyes that where it's taking in data and information from its surroundings. Correct. And you can put on top of it what's called load and one of the load is a robotic arm. And so when I work with spot, when I paint, that's what we use, the robotic arm. How do you control spot? When I paint, I really like operating it manually. So it's almost like an extension of my arm. So it's like being back in art school, but you're the teacher. Yeah. Yeah, correct. That's why the pieces are also kind of like almost like children finger painting because spot is really embryonic artist. Just learning. How obvious is that this was painted by a human and this was painted by a machine? Yeah, so they're very different. My work is what I would call contemporary realism and spot works is pure abstraction. It's very line driven and I appreciate having fun with the technology because allowed me to enter that space of abstraction without feeling like I'm a sellout and I'm trying to, you know, do what's popular. Are you figuring spot is going to be like a cardinal in Renaissance Italy that you would draw the picture of? I think spot is the first celebrity robot if Warhol were alive. He'd be totally like obsessed with spot because spot is the celebrity. He'd be painted with spot instead of Basquiat. I think so. I think so. Yeah, definitely. Or Pollack. One of your best known paintings of spot is a pastiche or homage to nude descending a staircase. How does Duchamp fit into your kind of painterly world? When I was at Boston Dynamics and I I went there just with an intention of painting a portrait of spot. But then when I saw the robot go up and down the stairs, it was just instantly for me, oh, this is a Duchamp moment and I have to innovate. So I'm very grateful to Duchamp for that moment for me. And that's why I started doing augmented reality because I thought, OK, the painting has to be really very innovative. It was the first augmented reality painting in my career and it changed me a lot. You were born in Poland and you grew up there. What was the first piece of technology that you were like, oh, my God, I am entranced by this walkman. Yeah, do you remember time when you put the walkman out and you start talking very loud? Oh, this is so great. I remember my brother had a walkman and yeah, and I remember that moment putting it on your parents or a friend. And all of a sudden they're screaming out loud. But I till today I remember the experience. You were born in 1973. So you remember communism, which oftentimes figured kind of citizens as cogs in a machine. Talk a little bit about what was it like to grow up in communist Poland? Let me tell you a story of how I grew up. It's a Christmas morning and we wake up and my mom is running around and very unhappy. I'm like, well, what happened? I overslept. I looked, she looked out the window, look at the line in front of the grocery store. There's a huge line by the time I get there. This is going to be the worst Christmas. Everything is going to be sold out. It's horrible. But this was during the Marshall State, so there was curfew. So you were not allowed to be on the street before, I don't know, eight a.m. or something, but people would line up quietly because they wanted to get food. And that morning at least came with big vans. They put everyone in the vans. My mom in the window was like, oh, my God, this is the best thing ever. She got dressed fat and she was the first in the store. And I remember that Christmas like the best Christmas ever because she was like for tonight she could buy anything. And then what they would do, they wouldn't kill. They wouldn't keep the so they would do they would do annoying things because Poland wasn't that violent, but they would drive you out in the countryside. They let you out. You have to walk all the way home for like hours. So that was the punishment for people like, you know, like you take, you know, hundreds of people from the street because they were early. So they weren't like political enemies, but we're going to teach you a lesson. Wow. What else you remember about Poland before the before the end of the communist regime? I remember just lack of hope, like to look for the future. It didn't matter. You worked a lot or a little. You were paid the same. So I remember the despair from in my father's life drinking. And then I remember 89 when market economy opened up and Poland did something pretty interesting. They really let people buy out businesses they worked for on pretty good terms. My entire life, family life changed from one day to another because they just became such a good team and and they build a wonderful business within 10 years. You came to the U.S. in the early aughts 2004 and you headed to San Francisco. How did you feel about San Francisco when you got there? I mean, it was great. I love the weather and all that. But I was very confused about, like, kind of cultural and political views people held in the valley and especially in San Francisco in the city itself at first was like surprise, disappointment and then like call to arms, actually. So talk about that. What when you say you were surprised by the views that people held, what do you mean? I didn't realize that people still think that communism or socialism is a good idea. People in Silicon Valley as a whole, their ideal is very much aligned with what I consider very immoral system. They grew up in Poland, so they're very generous. So it kind of reflects American spirit of being generous and charity. What they don't understand is that it doesn't work in practical terms. And then they don't come in turn with their own guilt, that they have guilt, that they've done well. I guess this is a good place to mention that you also encountered Ayn Rand and you told writer from New York Magazine recently that I would not be the artist that I am without that book, meaning Atlas Shrugged. What is the message that you drew from her work? This was the first time I saw a moral justification for capitalism. And I always knew capitalism worked because I saw it from my childhood. I saw communism, I saw the transition. I saw it from my whole community. What's the essence of that moral defense? That I think that your obligation is to you first. I mean, Rand Rand connects a lot, a lot to politics. Her moral system were more interesting to me, actually. In a sense, again, that you have a right and a more obligation to yourself to have a purpose and work towards the purpose as hard as you can. People who are buying your paintings and whatnot, they are tech lords, right? You know, they are a cent of millionaires, if not billionaires. Are you flattering them by kind of not pointing portraits of them, but of technology and machines in a way that makes them the new aristocracy? Well, as artists, I would have to say we always work for patrons. That's what we do, unless and I don't want to be a starving artist. So patrons are very important to me and patronage is very important to me. And Michelangelo, he worked for a patron too. And I would argue the best artists always work for patrons. Is that also because the patrons end up loving the artwork and they give you a lot of freedom? Yes, correct. They come, they see something, appreciate something you're at. And it's a symbiotic relationship. I'm not flattering them. I'm telling the story I believe in. And I think they see that story on every part of that story. You also said that, and I'm quoting here from New York magazine, they're all egomaniacs, they're all wrapped up in themselves. It's like talking to a fish out of water. They just don't get it. What does that mean? OK, so I have to say that that quote was a bit, you know, it was a long conversation I had with Sean, who is great, the writer. And it's hard for them to relate to day to day staff and they shouldn't. I mean, I had the conversation with actually Richard Branson and I made the case to him that I think he contributes so much to humanity, not just in terms of the economic value, but he's so inspiring. I think the culture of resentment and egalitarianism to the top absurdity. I'm very much against that. I think some people are leaders and their whole life is about contributing. And it's OK if they are, you know, have a bit or more economic value. I don't resent that. And it sounds cheesy, but I love America. This is my service to America as an immigrant from Eastern Europe. And, you know, I play the game like Warhol. I want to be sell and successful because that's the only way for the work to be seen. And that's ultimately why I paint because I want to tell that story. And that's the only thing we have control over. And we have to learn to get value just from that. What's next for you? You're going to be an artist in residence for a space company, right? Yeah, I am in conversation with SpaceX. So my machines, I call them portrait of machines or heroic portrait of machines. And I want to do what's a super heroic portrait of machine. So that has to be space. And when you say do something in space, you're hopefully you'll be going into space when creating in a zero gravity or upper orbit. Well, I don't know about that. We'll see what happens for now. All the first step I really want to do is to just go to to Texas and see technology from up close, see what excites me about it. You would you would go in space if you could. If I could, yeah, I would think twice about it. That's the ultimate migration, right? The ultimate migration, yes, true, true. Yeah, yeah, I think we're going to leave it there. Agnieszka Palat, thanks so much for talking to me. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.