The Aesthetics of Imperfection in Music and the Arts

Spontaneity, Flaws and the Unfinished

Andy Hamilton, Lara Pearson, Andy Hamilton, Lara Pearson

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350106079
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Aesthetics in Philosophy

The aesthetics of imperfection emphasises spontaneity, disruption, process and energy over formal perfection and is often ignored by many commentators or seen only in improvisation. This comprehensive collection is the first time imperfection has been explored across all kinds of musical performance, whether improvisation or interpretation of compositions. Covering music, visual art, dance, comedy, architecture and design, it addresses the meaning, experience, and value of improvisation and spontaneous creation across different artistic media. A distinctive feature of the volume is that it brings together contributions from theoreticians and practitioners, presenting a wider range of perspectives on the issues involved. Contributors look at performance and practice across Western and non-Western musical, artistic and craft forms. Composers and non-performing artists offer a perspective on what is 'imperfect' or improvisatory within their work, contributing further dimensions to the discourse. The Aesthetics of Imperfection in Music and the Arts features 39 chapters organised into eight sections and written by a diverse group of scholars and performers. They consider divergent definitions of aesthetics, employing both 18th-century philosophy and more recent socially and historically situated conceptions making this an essential, up-to-date resource for anyone working on either side of the perfection-imperfection debate.

Part I

The positive value of imperfection

1

The aesthetics of imperfection

The finished work, and process versus product

Andy Hamilton

The Introduction to this volume outlines the editors’ interpretation of the opposition between aesthetic perfection and imperfection. To reiterate, the latter involves an open, spontaneous response to contingencies of performance or production, reacting positively to unpromising as well as promising circumstances. It can include idiosyncratic instruments, apparent failings in one’s performance or that of colleagues, and age and infirmity. Perfectionists, in contrast, prefer a planning model, not readily modified in face of contingencies.

It follows that imperfection is not just toleration of errors and imperfections, as Ted Gioia assumes, but a positive aesthetics, illustrated by the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi.¹ What was imperfect can become a new style or aesthetic – a kind of perfection – and so true imperfectionism is a constant striving for new contingencies to respond to. I begin by defending this positive sense of imperfection, and continue by addressing the idea of the finished work, the view that perfecting and finishing is always bad, and the alleged opposition between process and product.

A positive sense of ‘imperfection’

According to Passmore, ‘perfection’ originates in the Greek concept of function, and the Latin concept of thoroughly made or completed – the English ‘perfect’ derives from Latin perficere.² These are positive features, and therefore many readers wonder how ‘imperfection’ could be positive. The reason usually offered is that there may be something wrong with the thoroughgoing pursuit of perfection. Thus jazz pianist Frank Kimbrough contrasts his own approach with that of the perfectionist entertainer who pleases the public:

It’s not about perfection. It’s not about a show. I don’t plan sets, ever. I’m playing solo tomorrow, and I have no idea what I’m going to play.³

The jazz musician who relies on the safety net of learned patterns, Dave Brubeck comments, ‘strives for perfection’, but their playing ‘will lack vital involvement with the moment of creation’.⁴ For improviser Evan Parker, perfection is ‘an ideal . . . but it would be terrible to think you have achieved it’.⁵ The implication is that conscious pursuit of perfection stifles creativity.

Still the objection persists, ‘Why characterise spontaneity, creativity, and vibrancy as imperfection?’ Kimbrough said, ‘It’s not about perfection’ – he didn’t add, ‘It’s about imperfection.’ ‘That is, ‘perfection is not the aim’ does not imply, ‘Imperfection is’. But the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi prizes, and does not just tolerate it. Perhaps ‘imperfection’ is not a means to an end, or an end in itself, but still contributes to the value of the whole.

The value of imperfection, in this sense, is a human value. For composer Linda Catlin Smith, imperfection involves a ‘by-hand’ quality:

wabi-sabi [accepts] transience and impermanence . . . the object is made by hand, and therefore has the tiny deviations or imperfections left by that touch . . . the sense of the lip on the mouthpiece, the hair of the bow on the string, the contact of the mallet or stick or bow.

She describes a composition’s ‘subtle variations akin to the imperfections in a hand-drawn picture [and] in the way things change as they age – the paint on the canvas cracks, fabric fades’. She wants a ‘by-hand-ness quality’: ‘If I wanted absolute control over the sounding experience I would make an electroacoustic recorded work.’⁶

Before the digital age, all artefacts had this ‘by-hand’ quality. It disappeared in two stages. Through the development of steam power in the nineteenth century, precision engineering appeared. As Winchester explains in The Perfectionists: ‘precision was a concept that was invented, quite deliberately. . . . [It] was measurable, recordable, repeatable.’⁷ But precision had a by-hand quality till the digital era, as a visit to a railway museum shows. Until the 1960s, coachwork and cab instruments on steam and early diesel locomotives were made by hand, with plates and rivets; the finish is still crude. Individual locomotives of the same pattern or type have noticeable differences in their details. On production lines, workers fitted components by hand, hence misalignments and mistakes; the ‘Friday afternoon Ford’ passed quality control, but had problems later. Such idiosyncrasies are no longer found in current moulding and Computer Numerical Control manufacturing.

David Lloyd’s insightful critique, in this volume, distinguishes (1) tolerance of imperfection, (2) exploitation of imperfection and (3) imperfection as an aim; he argues that imperfectionism is unstable, collapsing into a kind of perfection. Exploitation, he argues, supports an aesthetics of imperfection only in a weak and parasitic sense: ‘A genuinely independent aesthetics of imperfection requires the identification of imperfections that bear aesthetic value in their own right.’ For instance, guitar feedback was an unwelcome disturbance that became a signature of improvised rock. What was originally, and in most genres still is, regarded as a flaw or imperfection in the sound became exploited as a virtue or perfection. Likewise, Cageian preparation of instruments:

Instructions for preparation can be followed accurately or inaccurately, satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily, perfectly or imperfectly. When pursued with creative purpose, what from a mainstream perspective seems an imperfection [becomes] ‘perfect’.

Lloyd concludes that ‘An object is called “imperfect” when it falls short of an ideal or standard that we already have . . . Imperfections, flaws, are defined with respect to a specific set of interests, expectations, and ends.’ If improvisational artforms are being inappropriately evaluated as compositional forms, he argues, one should not seek recourse to an unstable aesthetics of imperfection, but should ‘fully recognise improvisation’s distinctive features as virtues fit for aesthetic appreciation in [their own] terms’.⁸

Lloyd is right to argue that what was imperfect can become a new style or aesthetic – another kind of perfection. The conversion of errors into felicities is a familiar process in art. Like guitar feedback, vinyl appliqué effects in glitch electronica began as straightforward imperfections – surface noise or tape hiss. Antares Auto-Tune was designed to correct a singer’s errors in pitch; after Cher’s 1998 hit ‘Believe’, producers used it as a sound effect, deliberately distorting vocals – creating some of the most puerile subgenres in the history of musical commodification. A mark on a Japanese bowl becomes a felicity, as John Tilbury comments:

The lip of my Japanese dish is uneven . . . but along its rim the patient mouth can discover an intimate resting point. . . . It has a solidity and weight, and yet a delicacy, which makes it perfect to hold, and drink tea from. My Japanese bowl is an accident by design.⁹

One might argue that the ninety-year-old Lee Konitz could not be the player he was – but in his hesitations and imperfections, we recognize our frailty and humanity. More positively, we may discern a late style, as with Lester Young or Bud Powell. It is a narrow aestheticism that rejects such considerations in artistic evaluation.

It is not clear that imperfectionism is unstable in the way that Lloyd argues, however. Derek Bailey’s broken guitar string, or The Necks’ silent waiting at the start of a performance, began as contingencies, but became expected. A process can become predictable, but a true imperfectionist always seeks new contingencies, constantly striving for spontaneity – as, indeed, may a true artist. My opening definition of imperfectionism was ‘an open, spontaneous response to the contingencies of the performing situation’. In response to Lloyd’s objections, this definition should be developed: imperfectionism is a constant striving for new contingencies to respond to. It follows that perfectionism, in contrast, is a mode of entertainment or a mode of classicism. The sense of necessity, often expressed as organic unity, is a common feature of modern art and belongs with perfection as a classicist ideal. The question of classicism is material for another occasion, however; here I pursue the mode of entertainment.

Perfection as an entertainment mode

My view is that pure entertainment is a performance that aims to give pleasure or delight to an audience by amusing or exciting them, in a way that requires from them little or no concentrated effort. A complementary characterization of art is: a practice or performance involving skill, with a conscious aesthetic end, that richly rewards aesthetic attention. ¹⁰ But only the most hermetic artist has no concern with entertainment, while some of the greatest entertainers are not pure entertainers but artist-entertainers. A paradigm is Louis Armstrong.

James Brown was an artist-entertainer who drilled his band into a Funk Machine. But as improviser Steve Beresford comments, the band did not appear unspontaneous:

I’m not sure James Brown was interested in perfection – he was interested in making things happen that were exciting. His set was certainly extremely tight. But it’s full of contradictions, as James Brown was. His music was incredibly tightly-controlled, and at the same time the wildest thing you’ve ever seen . . . it’s that obsessive repetitiveness of the music.¹¹

Popular entertainment involves much drilling. Maceo Parker’s tribute to James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles and George Clinton, at Bergamo Jazz 2018, was slick entertainment, but far from lifeless – for instance when, at the end of the opening number, the band ended a song in an extended ‘freeze’. Parker described his music as ‘Two percent jazz and ninety-eight percent funky stuff’ – an exaggeration, as the jazz element was higher. Making something look effortless takes a lot of effort – but I would guess that there were unpredictable interactions even here.

Maceo Parker’s routines are well rehearsed – he must have a template for a 75-minute show, with a fairly constant set list – the aesthetics of perfection, honed and crafted, of a consummate entertainer. As Beresford comments, ‘It’s show business! You don’t discuss what tune you’re going to do onstage.’¹² The pure entertainer needs control because they aim to sell a product. For artists, and artist-entertainers, however, perfectionist concern with control takes other forms, as we now see.

Perfectionism, the finished work and the unfinished

Perfectionism, in its everyday senses, has positive and negative connotations. A ‘perfectionist’ can be someone with very high standards, and a clear idea of when to let go of an artwork – when they consider it perfected. Exacting director Stanley Kubrick is an example. But there is also the negative sense of someone who does not realize when something is finished – when it is good enough – and cannot let it go. Perfection here impedes excellence; an artist must make the judgement of when a work is finished, or let someone else make it for them. There is a fine line between perfectionism in negative and positive senses. The 2017 film on Giacometti, Final Portrait, showed the artist destroying and restarting frequently – a not unfamiliar situation. Perhaps he was not the best judge of the quality of his own work?

Writers disagree whether being unfinished is a good or bad thing. My 2000 article, which interpreted imperfect as meaning ‘unfinished’, assumed that it could be a good thing. But when I discussed my view with him, composer and i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I The positive value of imperfection
• Part II Social and cultural context
• Part III Composition versus improvisation
• Part IV Interpretation and freedom
• Part V Risk, disruption and failure
• Part VI Collaboration in performance
• Part VII The instrumental impulse
• Part VIII Finished and unfinished work
• Index
• Copyright