The Restless Seeker– At West End Gallery
Great art, especially literature, but the other arts too, carries a built-in self-critical recognition of its incompleteness. It accepts and celebrates jumble, and the bafflement of the mind by the world. The incomplete pseudo-object, the work of art, is a lucid commentary upon itself… Art makes a place for precision in the midst of chaos by inventing a language in which contingent details can be lovingly noticed and obvious truths stated with simple authority. The incompleteness of the pseudo-object need not affect the lucidity of the mode of talk which it bodies forth; in fact, the two aspects of the matter ideally support each other. In this sense all good art is its own intimate critic, celebrating in simple and truthful utterance the broken nature of its formal complexity. All good tragedy is anti-tragedy. King Lear. Lear wants to enact the false tragic, the solemn, the complete. Shakespeare forces him to enact the true tragic, the absurd, the incomplete.
Great art, then,… inspires truthfulness and humility.
–Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature (1997)
I came across this passage from an essay from the late novelist/philosopher Iris Murdoch and it sent my mind racing. I have long extolled our imperfection as one of the functions and driving forces of art, particularly my own. In fact, one of my early exhibits was titled Seeking Imperfection. It continues to be one of my favorite titles because it says so much about what I do in those two simple words.
Perfection, and the pursuit of it, seems to be the antithesis of art, at least as I see it. Life is imperfect and forever incomplete so a perfect anything is a less than truthful depiction of who and what we are.
I guess that’s easy to say for someone who deals in imperfection and incompleteness, someone who doesn’t aspire for perfection in their work because they know it is simply not within the reach of their abilities.
But that admission might be making my point.
We– actually I– am flawed and imperfect in many ways, so much so that the best I can hope for in my work is some form of perfect imperfection. Work that highlights and even celebrates the flaws and incompleteness that mark me and everyone else as human.
That I can do.
When I first read the Murdoch passage the first thing that jumped to mind was that I should title one of my upcoming 2026 shows Perfectly Incomplete.
I might just do that. And yes, even though I will be deep into the treatment for my cancer, I am going forward with my shows. I am excited to see what emerges in the coming months.
It should be interesting. And truthful. And real. But I can guarantee you this, it won’t be perfect.
Well, maybe perfectly imperfect and perfectly incomplete.
Redtree Times 