  However, Sartre’s analyses of the relationship between the artwork’s elements shows that the insistence on unity as a criterion of artistic beauty is perhaps not as banal as it might sound. Sartre’s pre-war texts on the imagination are especially informative on this topic. In them, Sartre shows the substantial relationship between the power of human consciousness to “nihilate” the world (to overlook some of its aspects and emphasise others on the basis of an existential set of values) and the internal coherence of the artwork: