Perfectly imperfect

On my last day in Oregon last week, I went to the Portland Art Museum with my friend Ed. We wanted to see the exhibit of Chuck Close prints, and In Winter, Silk Linings, a collection of Japanese kimono prints.

Ed and I have each returned to our fine arts roots, but we met years ago professionally, as graphic designers. This shared background gives us an unusual familiarity with the methods used in both Close’s experiments and in traditional woodcuts.

The Close show was fascinating. It was well-curated, including not only technical background information, but selected prints capturing sequential stages of an edition, and record-keeping ephemera which Close and his collaborators employed in an astoundingly detailed and systematic process.

We sat down in front of a series from the silkscreen portrait of artist John Chamberlain, a half dozen or so samples from an edition employing 100 colors and an unknown number of screens. We tried to understand exactly how Close had developed the image, how he knew which colors to add where, and when. Even the meticulous charts he worked from could not have resolved the thousands of tiny dilemmas of value he faced with each additive impression.

Close’s images are compelling, but his process seems almost more important than what it expresses. In the end, we were exhausted simply by studying, and wondered if perhaps such technical virtuosity was evidence of some kind of mania.

There was little relief to be found downstairs amongst the woodcut prints. These too are meticulously wrought. It is hardly surprising that Close collaborated with Japanese woodcut masters in creating some of his editions. In wood these masters carve out representations of the most delicate lines and brush strokes. The patterns and colors and stylistic details of kimono fabric are captured in every particular; there are even tiny areas of brocade-like embossment. We found it difficult to imagine that such painstaking and laborious craft was rewarding, or even economically feasible, but it must have been.

* * *

During my formal working life I was exceedingly organized. I kept lists and careful calendars, developed systems for almost every contingency, always working to become more efficient. Not very many items slipped between the cracks, but some inevitably did. Finally one day I realized that, yes, it might be possible to manage things even more effectively, but to do so was going to require significantly more time and energy; there would be a diminishing return on investment.

In most activities there must be a similar point of diminishing return. That’s a peculiarly Western materialistic expression of the understanding that we don’t and can’t control the world we experience. At least, not often, and not very much.

Perhaps it is fitting that the concept of wabi-sabi, on the other hand, springs from the same Japanese culture which produced such painstaking craftsmen. In the wabi-sabi aesthetic, nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect— but is nonetheless beautiful. Because no result can be ideal, the process of working towards a result becomes more important. Craftsmanship becomes each simple momentary act of creation, one after another, rather than what is left when the creating stops.