Blank patches on the canvas; entire paragraphs crossed out; pages burnt in the nearest fireplace; or colours blurred by a sudden rainfall. Some artworks meet abrupt ends – whether because of natural disasters; the author’s sudden disgust with his own work; or the calm, shameful abandonment to a well dusted attic, where all discarded bits and pieces of wounded artistic potential have ultimately been stashed. But, these bits of refuse are not nothing. Together, they make the argument for a more imperfect way of working.

I have always been unconsciously drawn to artists who leave some of their work unfinished or who decide to entirely destroy them. Something makes me return to these “failed” attempts, makes me wonder whether their completion necessarily depends on the artist giving it the final brushstroke and writing their signature on it.

“There was something incomplete lingering now in my subconscious”

Quite recently, during the colder days of Easter term, I read Gogol’s Dead Souls (1842) – I have a strange habit of delving into classic Eastern literature when it is chilly outside; I guess it gives me a good excuse for drinking an ungodly amount of lime tree tea even in spring. But leaving aside all the leafy, heart-warming infusions – I must confess I did not know about the intended second volume of Dead Souls until I reached the end, where a few surviving chapters from his journals are scattered. Either due to an improbable accident or because of a sudden artistic dismay, Gogol decided to burn the sequel’s manuscript. Many critics theorise that he had only meant to discard its copy, but ended up throwing the original into the fire instead. Supposedly, he told his friends that it had been a “practical joke played on him by the Devil.” But what is certain is that, nine days after burning the manuscript, he starved himself to death.

However, despite the drama of the sequel’s demonian incineration, as a reader, I felt no anxiety about the fact it didn’t continue into a second volume. Not because I hadn’t enjoyed it but because, in his typical interfusion of satire and realism, Gogol had said so much in the first volume alone. That said, I was still left wondering about what might have happened in the volume that’s now been lost; there was something incomplete lingering now in my subconscious.

“It is the understanding of one’s own inability that gives rise to a patchy chevalet, able to outshine even the most impeccable Gioconda”

But maybe not knowing it makes the first part even more powerful. Every time someone decides to cast aside an artistic endeavour, there is inevitably a “what if” left behind. At some point, there was the possibility of it having another form – of reaching a state that now remains beyond our imagination. But, instead, what he left is the evidence of a possible bright future never achieved: his undeveloped creation giving rise to countless directions in which it could have evolved. And all these imperfect possibilities are liberating rather than terrifying.

I felt the same sense of wonder at Cézanne’s Les Grandes Baigneuses (1906), which made me check my own perfectionism. This painting has been haunting me for a while now, not only because (after seven years working on it) Cézanne abruptly died without finishing it, but also because of the uneasiness I feel each time I come across it. A stifling worry incubates it – a disdain which is innate, unyielding. The insecurity that Cézanne felt towards the end has been transcribed onto this crude last work.

It makes me wonder whether doubting oneself, as Cézanne did, is one of the greatest performances of an artist’s life. It is the understanding of one’s own inability that gives rise to a patchy chevalet, able to outshine even the most impeccable Gioconda.

In the end, each one of these renowned stories hints at our nausea when confronted with our own incompleteness. It is this very inability to be at peace with our own work that reminds me that our society has been blinded by a maladaptive pursuit of perfection. We are all so quick to judge and to pinpoint others’ faults and so frightened of our own defective creations. Maybe, in the end, unvarnished art tells us more than the greatest masterpieces ever could. So what if there is something missing? So what if the paint peels off around the right corner of the sky? Ultimately, that unpainted patch could lead to an escape – to a pathline transcending this oh so perfect world we live in…