im/perfection

This started with a single photo of piquant Diana Vreeland at age 80: designer-clad, freshly-dyed, cigarette in hand. The Fashion Book (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1998) describes her as "the beautiful swan and ugly duckling of fashion, complete with kabuki-like make-up." 1960s editor of Vogue, she had an Oscar Wilde-ish talent for turning a phrase. My favorites: "Pink is the navy blue of India" and, more to my point, "Elegance is refusal."

Elegance is refusal. Every pore of her lifted and subsequently dropped skin says it. I like this take on elegance in the realm of fashion. We often think of fashion as the provenance of young, beautiful, too-thin models; of status seekers and the oppressive, dysfunctional world of Milan runways. But I’m convinced there is a less sinister side. Elegance is refusal. Being fashionable, I’m convinced, is about bucking up. Fashion is about optimism; about doing one’s best despite gravity; about seeking perfection with the understanding that the result is going to be imperfect.

I see parallels in art and architecture. We have an appreciation of patina in a piece of weathered copper; of the softly concave shape of a cutting board surface that’s had generations of use. These are beautiful in their recognition of decay in aesthetics, but not what I’m talking about right now. I’m celebrating the slightly awkward, the noble attempt, the near miss, the clearly imperfect.

Piet Mondrian, early twentieth-century painter, is such an example. Photographed, his late-career, black/white/red/yellow/blue geometric paintings represent flawless mechanical perfection. Seen in person, however, one sees brush strokes, imperfect edges, tape marks, cracking, marginally covered previous layers of paint. These flaws provide a vigorous tension in his paintings between the pursuit of perfection and limitations of the hand.

Schroder House
(Courtesy of GreatBuildings.com)

Mondrian’s contemporary and architectural alter ego, Garrit Rietveld, designed the Schroder_House in 1924 with the same awkward rigor. Imperfections abound amidst the palette of black, white, and primary colors.

Currently, the torch is carried by personalities such as John Pawson, architect and interior designer, prince of 90s minimalism. His spaces are serene and white, and all visual distractions are removed. They suggest that perfection is attainable, but on closer inspection, it’s clearly not. Corners are dented and cracked from the loafer that got too close; gaps between doors once calibrated to the thirty-second of an inch grow uneven as wood asserts its organic will.

Why attempt such perfection? Why not use the understanding of the inevitable flaw as a generator for an aesthetic Why can’t 80-year-olds act their age? Why don’t all paintings celebrate the messy lusciousness of the oil? Why isn’t all architecture meant to age gracefully?

I don’t know. Maybe it should. But that saucy smile on Diana Vreeland’s face shows she knows something, and I bet it doesn’t have anything to do with sweat pants or growing old gracefully.

P.S. A note of perspective: I recently read an interview with John Pawson and his wife Annie Bell. The article was about their super-minimalist townhouse in London, and the interview took place there. The writer mentioned to Ms. Bell that it must be wonderful to live in such a beautiful, serene space. Her reply? She never had time to enjoy it. She spent all her time picking up and putting away.