Although basing your Memory Palaces on buildings you’ve seen with your own eyes will always be a best practice, it’s not your only option.

Sure, buildings are generally best.

That’s because remembered locations let us easily “offload” what we want to learn onto walls, corners and furniture as if they were hard drives.

But you can also develop thousands of Memory Palace options simply by utilizing art. And there are countless works waiting to be discovered using the phone in your pocket.

Using art is in fact one of the most elegant and pleasing ways to expand your memory practice.

From paintings and photographs to album covers and book jackets, I’ve long expanded my Memory Palace collection by using art.

There is a trap, however.

If you use art in the wrong way, you’ll double your cognitive load and confuse yourself faster than you can say “Giordano Bruno.”

(In case you don’t catch the reference, Bruno was the Renaissance memory master who used many statues in his Memory Palaces to expand them.)

In this tutorial, I’m sharing with you how to use any piece of art as a Memory Palace effectively, including the one “golden rule” you definitely don’t want to break.

Believe me, I’ve tried and it’s not worth the hassle.

Ready to massively expand your use of mnemonics by drawing upon art you’re already familiar with?

Let’s dive in!

Paintings as Memory Palaces: Architecture Within Architecture

Let’s start with the basic concept first.

When you use a painting as a Memory Palace, you are opening up a number of options.

The simplest involves either using a painting that is already in a building that you are using. Or you place a painting inside of a Memory Palace you’ve used before to expand it.

As a third option, you can refer to a painting and use it as a Memory Palace unto itself without reference to where it exists in space.

Finally, as I discuss in my post about visiting art galleries to help improve your memory, you can turn galleries and museums into Memory Palaces. By using the various artworks that stood out to you, it’s possible to wind up having an exceptionally strong Memory Palace.

One of the Memory Palaces I used to memorize a Sanskrit mantra used Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art, for example. Many pieces from one particular exhibition formed part of the encoding process, assisted by an effect memory scientists call context dependent memory.

Either way, as I discuss in my main tutorial on how to use the Memory Palace technique, the key is to avoid increasing cognitive load.

There’s always the risk of putting pressure on your brain instead of reducing it unless you use the painting variation of the Memory Palace technique carefully.

To that end, let’s go through some best practices, starting with the most important.

Metivier’s Golden Rule: Do Not “Memorize” Any Memory Palace

Some people will hear that I use paintings in my Memory Palaces and start looking at art and memorizing it.

Although you can certainly do so, this is not what I mean.

Rather, I mean to suggest that if you use any of the possible options I listed above, you make sure that the painting or artwork is already in your memory.

This point seemed to be very important to Giordano Bruno, whom I mentioned above.

In his book, Thirty Statues, Bruno places his mnemonic associations on mythological figures he already knows.

He’s following a principle crucial to all ancient memory techniques that distinguish them from the processes of some memory competitors that have led to a lot of confusion.

Whereas memory competitors may learn a lot of associations assisted by techniques like the Major System and the PAO System, that’s for accomplishing short-term retention.

For this reason, I wince whenever someone tells me that they’re going to memorize a bunch of locations to use as Memory Palaces.

Even after looking at my massive collection of Memory Palace ideas and Memory Palace examples, some people still charge forward and memorize despite learning that the most accomplished mnemonists did not do this.

So the point is that if you’re going to use the Mona Lisa as a Memory Palace, make sure you already have a basic mental image of this artwork in your mind.

The Mona Lisa Test

I’m mentioning the Mona Lisa because it’s both relatively simple and very famous. It’s almost certainly in your long-term memory.

But a great way to start using a variety of paintings is to create an inventory. The following activity is a powerful memory exercise unto itself.

Step One:

Write A-Z on a piece of paper
For each letter name an artwork or artist that comes to mind
When you’re just starting, I recommend sticking with portrait paintings or photographs