Author’s note: I began this essay on February 25th 2020, long before the world was plunged into the global nightmare that is the Covid pandemic. Today, the reality that the world is an imperfect place is beyond obvious. “Normal” is the new perfect. We would all settle for even a glimmer of what used to be. Perfect is no longer a goal, the desire for perfect is replaced by manageability, comfort and even survival as worthy ends. Even as we contemplate the new normal it still seems useful to consider perfectionism/imperfectionism and how those intentions impact the serenity we long for.
This blog post is certainly imperfect. But it’s complete some 12 months after I wrote the first draft, not for the number of rewrites but for the ennui and stasis spawned by a worldwide disaster that forced us to long for “normal,” a loftier more desirable goal all of a sudden than “perfect’” I’m posting this and moving on. Doing so will allow me to appreciate learning from it and go on to what’s next: more creativity, more production, less stasis and zero perfectionism.
As popular and prominent as perfectionism has been throughout the history of all things creative, it is its cost that interests me. Who have I followed into the gyre of perfectionism and what is the cost? Is there a better way to create?
According to the Washington Post, the director James Cameron became so obsessed with an observation about one of his night sky scenes in Titanic he chose to reshoot to show the stars correct for the time of year. Washington Post writer Maura Judkis describes how Neil de Grasse Tyson, upon seeing the film, noticed how the night sky over the Atlantic for the time and place of the ship’s sinking was inaccurate for the position of the stars. Cameron is quoted as saying,
“And with my reputation as a perfectionist, I should have known that and I should have put the right star field in. So I said ‘All right, send me the right stars for that exact time and I'll put it in the movie.’ ”
And Cameron did for the 3D re-release of the film.
Looking at art history, I see Leonardo DaVinci as an exemplar of perfectionism at its apogee. His St. Jerome in the Wilderness is widely thought to be unfinished simply because the artist couldn’t resist the urge to perfect each and every element. Some scholars believe DaVinci may have resisted finishing the neck muscles until two decades after he began the painting when he had a better grasp of the anatomy.
In Girogio Vasari’s “Lives of the Most Eminent Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors, first published in 1550, Vasari says of DaVinci,
“The truth however is surely that Leonardo’s profound and discerning mind was so ambitious that this was itself an impediment; and the reason he failed was because he endeavored to add excellence and perfection to perfection.”
I had an early introduction to perfectionism on my arrival in Tucson Az in 1982. Seven years prior renowned American photographer Ansel Adams co-founded the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in 1975 His archive, together with four others, formed the basis of the Center’s collection. I frequently viewed displays of Adams original prints in shows at the time. Adams was a key practitioner of zone system photography, a precise method of rendering black and white images in gradations of gray values sometimes imperceptible to the untrained eye.
According to Kelly Dennis in her article, “Eclipsing Aestheticism: Western Landscape Photography After Ansel Adams” for the online journal Miranda, Adams was,
“A casualty to some degree of his own overproduction, Adams spent years in the darkroom repeatedly printing many of the same negatives out of a sense of perfectionism.” Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941 stands as a benchmark of Adams obsession for the perfect image. The photograph depicts the town of Hernandez, New Mexico against the snowy peaks of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Adams was able to make just a single imperfect negative of the scene before the light shifted and its desirable effects were lost. Adam reportedly labored over this poorly exposed negative for the next 40 years and made an estimated 1000 prints from it in an effort to capture the precise emotions the light of the scene evoked.
“Nail Cabinet” by Garry Knox Bennett features a 16d framing nail driven intentionally into the topmost door of an otherwise “perfect” piece of furniture
Is perfectionism best approached from its opposite? Not the imperfect as an abstract expression where perfection resides in the most refined and truest depiction of emotional energy but imperfection that is an admission and resolution of the question of God versus man. A close though perhaps contrived approximation of this aesthetic might be the ‘Nail’ Cabinet, a padauk display cabinet furniture maker Gary Knox Bennet deliberately made less precious and less perfect by driving a large framing nail into the cabinet’s largest door. The nail is positioned at exactly eye level.
I’m not so much arguing for a world where less than perfect is the deliberate intention (My personal preference is an orthopedic surgeon who does strive for his most perfect hip replacement every time (I’m 69). “Please God, make the device and its installer as close to perfect as You Yourself are comfortable,” I pray) My argument is for the consideration of perfect and imperfect as a conscious choice between where I need to apply my energy towards flawlessness and where the imperfect is not only acceptable but desirable. I still have just one life to live...everything perfect and just right perhaps wastes too many moments which can never be recovered.
Perfectionism traffics in an illusion as seductive as a Mandelbrot fractal: with sufficient talent and diligence it is attainable and once attained perfection equals an unassailable certainty of achievement no matter how close you look. I am because I have attained this pinnacle of creativity or at least craft. To which Michelangelo has said, “The true work of art is but a shadow of divine perfection.”
Detail showing author’s reversed dovetail drawer design that subverts the joints natural tendency to stay together when pulled.
I’ve certainly seen the shadows of imperfection cast upon my own work. In the early 1980’s I attended a furniture making workshop at the Rhode Island School of Design taught by John Dunnigan and Tage Frid. Frid is known for/as... Over the course of two weeks I designed and built a curiosity cabinet from mahogany lumber cut from the same tree. The grain of the cabinet’s sides matched, each is cut and scooped with carving tools to give gently upward sweeping curves, perfectly smooth and true to the eye and the hand. The case is joined with dovetail joints, the glass top is framed with custom-profiled mahogany also from the same tree, the drawers are dovetailed as well. Its back has matching planks floating in a tongue and groove enclosure. Its stand is a Japanese-inspired design of upward sweeping curves. It’s beautiful to look at and appears flawless. The six bale style drawer pulls were custom made by a local blacksmith. Passing my workbench one day in class, Frid observed that while the joints for the drawers were expertly fitted, they were also reversed in their orientation relative to the force on the drawer. Any effort to open one of the drawers, were it not for the glue, might tug the drawbox apart.
More recently, I was selected to participate in a group show where participants were to create local examples of a card game popular in Mexico called “Loteria.” With great effort I precisely collage each element of my piece, taking care to adhere everything with archival glue, covering each element with several coats of UV blocking spray and seamlessly coating the wood panel edge with several coats of acrylic spray paint. However, one of the requirements for the show doomed my work from its conception. The curator required all pieces to be strictly 11” x 14 “, a size wildly disproportionate with the standard original card game.
A recent attempt at shoe repair also stands as an antidote to my perfectionism. I’m on my third pair Minnetonka moccasins. My grandfather wore them, my father-in-law wore them, I wear them. My current pair are paint splattered and worn but still might have some life left. The soles are good, the leather is sound and they still fit well enough. But the stitching on the left shoe where the upper is sewn to the sole though was coming apart. I have a sewing awl kit that has served me well in the past so I set about cobbling a repair.
The gauge of the awl thread is not quite as stout as the Minnetonka original material but it’s quite strong and pliable. The problem was on the front instep of the shoe for about the first five inches going into the turn of the toe. I noticed that by removing the stitching from half of the tongue I was better able to see the needle as I pushed it deeper and deeper for each stitch toward the toe. I cut out the old stitching just enough to pull open the top of the moccasin. With the sole resewn to the upper, I used my awl stitcher to reattach the tongue to the left instep..
I tried on the mocaison to check my efforts: complete disaster. Where I once had a smooth and gentle radius around my left big toe I now found right angles. The sole was indeed reattached but with a severe list to starboard as though my instep and heel were headed straight while my toes signalled a left turn. The whole affair looked like a failed final exam for an orthopedic shoe apprentice. And I’ve never looked back since returning them to use. They fit fine, they feel fine but my God that left shoe is ugly. I confess I considered chucking the pair for new or ripping out the stitching and starting over. I couldn't find the rationale for either option. Imperfect has a place.
I look down at my perfectly good left foot distorted by its imperfectly shaped footwear and am reminded of Francis T. Vincent, Commissioner of Baseball when he said, “We learn at a very young age that failure is the norm in baseball and, precisely because we have failed, we hold in high regard those who fail less often. I also find it fascinating that baseball, alone in sport, considers errors to be part of the game, part of its rigorous truth...and perfection is an impossible goal.”
Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham in The Spirituality of Imperfection,1993 write:
“The spirituality of imperfection is thousands of years old yet it is timeless for it is concerned in the human being what is irrevocable and immutable...the basic and inherent flaws of being human...to deny our errors is to deny ourself for to be human is to be imperfect, somehow error prone to ask unanswerable questions but to persist in asking them. “The spirituality of imperfection speaks to those who seek meaning in the absurd...joy with the suffering,”
That shoe on my left foot qualifies as absurd and oh how I suffer remembering it was my own hand that wrought it.
The point is not to create a closet full of malformed footwear but to develop a switch that allows me to choose between the craftsmanship of excellence and the relaxed effort that allows “acceptable” and “manageable” under certain circumstances. This is the bargain I make with myself lest I plunge headlong down the rabbit hole of obstructionism where no result measures well against the standard that exists in my head and I send myself ever closer to depression and self loathing.
In and article on NYU’s website forum Applied Psychology Opus Brit Lizabeth Lippman cites a variety of studies when she writes:
“The concern that perfectionism may be harmful stems from links that were found between perfectionism and psychopathology. For instance, Bieling et al. (2004) found that both adaptive and maladaptive forms of perfectionisms are correlated with higher levels of depression, anxiety, stress, and test-taking anxiety, although maladaptive perfectionism alone was found to be a predictor of psychopathology. In particular, the literature has linked perfectionism to both depression and eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia (Blatt, 1995; Shafran & Mansell, 2001). In fact, Blatt (1995) referred to the “destructiveness of perfectionism” and addressed the troubling link between perfectionism and suicidal depression.”
In the Journal of Psychology and Cognition (2017) “The Impact of Perfectionism on Anxiety and Depression,” David S Lessin and Nadira T Pardo write,
“Perfectionists consistently report that they should have done better, and they criticize their work as lower in quality than others. They are quick to blame themselves when a goal is not reached, even ignoring clear environmental limitations that rendered the goal unattainable. They are unable to feel satisfied from what others would generally consider a job well done or even an exceptional performance. Nothing is ever good enough, no effort is ever sufficient, and there is no way to redeem themselves from the depths of their own inadequacy.”
The wages of perfectionism are grim and I’ve been there. The cost of attachment to perfection is loss of self and the work I might produce as an artist. If it’s true that 90% of what an artist makes is crap (the science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon said) then I want to make a tremendous amount of work in the years I have remaining to me on the back side of 69. Giving in to a level of perfectionism that traps me into ever-refining a small stable of semi-perfect works is the best wrong way of getting to the 10 percent of my output that could possibly have an impact on someone besides myself.
Take any task in front of you: weeding a patch of yard, writing an email, restacking the woodpile and intentionally do it less than perfect then let the discomfort slide over you with the knowledge that in this case that’s just a feeling that soon will pass. It's the same with art. Do the work, complete the piece, step back to learn something and move on to the next. A commentator on Reddit once relayed an experience they had at a fantasy convention:
“I was at a convention one time and heard an author speak on this exact topic (of perfectionism). He said that after one of his talks an aspiring writer walked up to him and said, proudly, that they'd rewritten their first chapter 27 times. "Why?" He said, "you could have written 27 other chapters and had a book."
