Another perfection
“Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
More is not better. Bigger is not better. Brighter is not better.
Less is more. Smaller is bigger. Subtle is brighter.
This quote makes me think about Michelangelo and his method. It is totally contrary to our representation of the creative process. He made sculptures better not by adding but by taking away.
It correlates with the concepts of essence in a work. What is a gift. It is not that simple. It is about finding a limit beyond which you cannot step over.
You think you want your work to be better and even ideal, but you never know what it is. Each creative process is looking for a limit.
There are two types of perfectionism: internal and external. Who can be called “neat freak” is a type of external perfectionism. This is when one little outside imperfection is annoying and irritating, and the person feels the need to fix it. But the more you are organized and easier to annoy, the more each irritating episode will affect you.
Internal perfectionism refers to performance. In this case, the result depends on the person himself. The problem with it is the fluidity of this moving target.
The core of perfection is a desire to align the work, or outer environment, with ideas inside of the head about how things ought to be. “Impose your will on objects”, in one philosophical theory. The outcome is the inability to accept things how they are.
There is a bond between internal and external perfectionism. What is the role of the physical environment in people’s performance? We have a conception of experience. This basically says that the places we have been to can affect us in the long run. For instance, you might be impressed by people, architecture, whatever. Then when one came back, there are some pictures in the mind and we have preserved this experience. Therefore, daily physical environment may be one type of such experience. Undoubtedly, there is a mundane experience of day-to-day life, but it is still one of them.
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There was an adherence to the symmetry and ideal proportions in Ancient Greece, especially in the High Classical period. But afterwards, we have the Hellenistic period when the canon was definitely transformed. Then after the Renaissance or Rebirth, we have the Baroque period. There are all different types of aesthetics. But with a huge percentage of accuracy, it can be seen as a peak of ideals and then descent to freer and more spectacular ones.
I’m talking about it because I feel that we perceive symmetry as a sign of perfection; that sometimes curve lines play the role of less perfect units than straight lines. We are trying to apply terms of value to aesthetics all the time.
In fact, it is rather one of the possible forms of things’ existence.
Now, I know what people mean by perfectionism in performance. It usually happens that the downside of perfection is a fatality. All or nothing. “It’s not my ideal day” and things are falling apart. The main problem with that is a necessity to put extra effort into the work. To be precise, it is about overcoming and dealing with the premise of the work.
Extra effort is called resistance. The antidote is shifting.
Perfectionism creates lack of consistency. It cannot always be perfect in terms of correlation with the idea how it ought to be. Perfectionism is a linear way of thinking. One presupposes the motion from less perfect towards more perfect. It eliminates mistakes along the way, but there is a Utopia. Even not mistakes, but the need to adjust what you are working on. Nothing is homogeneous.
Coming back to shifting, I suppose there is a strong desire in our mind to finish and complete work. Perfectionism doesn’t allow to move on. This is a feeling of drifting on the same spot. From my perspective, if the person doesn’t have a deadline for the work, then it is okay to literally change the subject. From time to time, our ideas just are not ripe yet. For instance, Pablo Picasso, when was building the form, didn’t do it all at a time. He started making sketches for the painting “Friendship” in 1901 and completed the work in 1908.
Behind every masterpiece of the past lies a myriad of sketches.
