THE PROBLEM OF PERFECTION(ism)
The best piece of advice I got was from my art teacher, Aubrey Mayhew.
He told me, "Art isn't about 'getting it right.' It's about your mistaken views which you give yourself permission to explore."
Until that moment, I was an Art Perfectionist.
I would labor mightily to 'get it right.' Mine was a kind of photographic perfectionism. If my portraits did not look like pencil drawings, I was satisfied I had 'got it right.'
Mr. Mayhew showed me drawings by Michaelangelo.
"See? You can easily tell these are only drawings--but--what drawings they are!"
It was true. The not-perfect of Michaelangelo somehow seemed better than any perfection I might attempt.
The question bothered me--WHY?
I never enjoyed my portraits--while others raved and paid money for them.
Mayhew had destroyed my sense of accomplishment.
Did he hurt me or help me? I still don't know--but--I went on to pursue a career in art. I left Texas for California and worked with some amazingly creative people.
None of the superb artists I met seemed to regard perfection as any kind of goal or aspiration. I questioned them very closely.
One painter told me, "I try to add one little bit of color that makes no sense!"
"Why?"
"It's a reminder."
"Of what?"
"It reminds people not to fall for seeing what they expect to see."
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Another artist explained his peculiar view to me. . .
"You see how some of the old Masters left no traces of their brush strokes? That was the result of religious mania."
"How do you figure that?"
"By removing the brushstrokes, they thought to remove the human being with all his imperfection. . . leaving only the beauty of God's nature."
"I don't get it.'
"The Renaissance was the end of the Dark Ages when men were smothered by the Church and perfectionism. But, they weren't ready to abandon their sense of themselves as sinful and corrupt in the sight of God."
"Yeah? Go on--what else?"
"If you remove yourself from the act of creation--it's an act of suicide and not self-abnegation. An artist is the God of his artwork. Why deny there is no painter? It is atheism."
"Sounds nutty to me."
"It is. It was. It took hundreds of years for society to accept anything other than nature paintings of humans, landscapes, fruit, etc. It was because these things were seen to acknowledge God and deny importance to man."
"I'll have to think about that one!"
"Don't. Until the Impressionists like Monet in art and Debussy in music dared to deconstruct nature 'as is' and reassemble it--Art suffered a selfless claustrophobia of existential suicide."
"I think I'm sorry I asked!"
"Picasso came along and destroyed the past by exploding everything in a ruthless gesture of anarchy! He defied Art by defying perception itself as a mirror of reality. In other words, he finally gave artists permission to exist on their own terms!"
"By destroying beauty, form, and perfection?"
"Especially by destroying the stale and vicious lie called 'Perfection.'"
____________________________
SO. . . ?
Perfectionism is an excuse for not having your own point of view.
Perfectionism is a retreat into formality without commentary.
Perfectionism is a kind of legalism in which humans must 'obey' or be punished.
ART isn't art unless it does two things.
1. It stops you and challenges your sense of 'rightness.'
2. It changes you in some way. You can't walk away without being changed.
Perfectionism challenges nothing in the status quo.
By 'getting it right' you cease to be important.
You may as well not even exist as a thinking, feeling, unique life form.
Why?
Perfectionism leaves no trace of you. After all, you are imperfect!
