“For some fifteen years,” declared L. Ron Hubbard in a crucial essay from 1965, “I have been studying, amongst other branches of philosophy, the subject of ART.” His reasons were twofold. First and foremost, as he explained, “Art is the least-codified of human endeavors and the most misunderstood.” Even its very definition, he noted, was still subject to intense debate. Thus, on a purely academic level, he wished to examine the subject in its broadest and most essential terms, and thereby resolve questions philosophers and critics have long pondered, including that most basic question of all, “What is Art?”

Yet, there was another reason for his interest in the subject: it lay very close to his heart. “Capturing my own dreams in words, paint or music and then seeing them live,” he had written some thirty years earlier, “is the highest kind of excitement.” While speaking of artists as a whole, he declared that only they are capable of putting forth our future. Unquestionably, then, this “rather vast subject of ART,” as he described it, was not one he took lightly; and, in fact, it is probably impossible to consider the life of L. Ron Hubbard without considering his artistic achievements.