Unfinished works in art history: Why death is only an impertinence

It remains a hard-to-bear fact that Robert Musil never wrote the last page of his monumental novel “The Man Without Characteristics” that David Bowie recorded only a few demos for his final work in the last few days of his life and that Stanley Kubrick was never able to realize the cinematic portrait of Napoleon, which was considered his heart project. likewiseIt hurts that Beethoven’s tenth symphony only exists as a longing motif and we will never have the opportunity to have a coffee on the top floor of Frank Lloyd Wright’s never-built high-rise Illinois high-rise building and marvel at the panorama of Chicago. It is these unfinished visions that exert an inexplicable attraction because they open the door to a world that neverwas entered, and nourish ideas that must always remain incomplete.

Romantic Fragments and the Longing for Completion

We are less interested in intentionally fragmentary works, as created by the poets of Romanticism. We know the romantic idea that art and poetry are always in the making, can never be completed and wait for a transcendent fulfillment. Novalis, Schlegel, Tieck – they all demand the unfinished as a poetic principle, because the absolute, thedivine, not representable anyway. But we, in our modern constitution, remain attached to reality. Our gaze is directed at the unintentional fragment, the failure, the unfinished reluctance. We don’t celebrate the process, but the break, the abruptly broken off, the involuntarily imperfect. It is the big dreams that shatter on reality, thecast a spell over us. We honor the artists, whose plans for Kühn, their lives too short, their health too fragile or their time just too short to complete their visions. Names like Kleist, Shelley, Schubert, Runge, Marc, Monroe, Fassbinder, Herrndorf, Hadid and the infamous club twenty-seven are representative of those whose creative fires went out before their workcould be completed.

The charm of failure and the beauty of the fragment

What exactly makes the unfinished so fascinating? The question of why: Why was this work never completed? Why did a novel remain fragmentary, an album unreceived, a building just a plan on paper, a symphony a sketch, a film a dream or a sculpture a torso? Every non-completed work of art tells a story of hope and disappointment, of fightingAnd surrender, of coincidences and adversities, which ultimately led to a fragment of a grandiose idea. We are captivated by the constant balancing act between megalomania and a sense of reality, between the urge for perfection and the limitations of life. The hopes, the wrestling, the soaring plans and the deep fall – all this makes the fragment a symbolhuman existence.

Michelangelo and the Age of Genius

The adoration of the fragment begins in art history with an unprecedented exception: Michelangelo. Already during his lifetime he was worshiped as “the divine”. Unlike before, his unfinished works, his Torsi, were not rejected as failures, but kept and admired as relics. Michelangelo’s tireless creative urge, his restless genius, hisManic perfection and his complete devotion to art founded a new conception of the artist: no longer the anonymous collective of the Middle Ages, but the unique, creative individual was now the focus. His contemporaries and successors suddenly saw in the fragment no longer only the imperfect, but the divine self. The idea of genius came into beingwhose name was only shaped in the Enlightenment and celebrated in Romanticism: originality, intuition, borderline experience and suffering became the leitmotifs of great artistic creation. From now on, the unfinished was considered just as important as the completed, the fragment as a window to a higher truth.

Myth formation and gender questions in the shadow of the unfinished

The question of the relationship between gender and creative power was also combined with the emergence of the genius ideal. Was it coincidence that the story tells mainly about men as unfinished geniuses? Art history is full of male names, while women were only able to claim space much later. Privileges, social structures and accesses, determine whoever had the opportunity to start big works – and possibly never complete them. Whether men are actually more fluttery or arrogant than women remains questionable. What is certain, however, is that power and recognition often lead to overconfidence and thus increase the risk of failure. At the same time, the image of the suffering, excessive, was at one’s own sizebreaking geniuses for a long time a male connoted ideal to which female creativity was not assigned.

The fragment as a cult object of the present

Despite all the postmodern criticism of the concept of genius and the idea of the omnipotent author, we are more addicted to artist icons today than ever. The largest exhibitions are dedicated to the sketches, designs and fragments of the famous. Complete editions include all the passages that were canceled, magnificent volumes present unknown material, special editions are included with demos, outtakes andadvertised alternative scenes. The unfinished has developed into a cult object. Behind this enthusiasm is perhaps a collective longing for infinity, for the continued existence of possibilities and for the myth that a work can never really be completed – and may never really be completed.

Modern fragmentation and the age of multitasking

In the age of digital acceleration, the fascination for the fragment is reflected in our everyday lives. We live in a world of constant interruptions, switch from one task to the next, consume media in appetizers, chat in parallel on several channels, assemble content, copy, mark, set in – and are always ready for the next. thePerfecting fragmentation has become our lifestyle. We are collectors and archivists, professionals in multitasking and proud of our versatility. At the same time, we strive for the greatest possible closeness to the original, to the authentic, to the moments when artists have not yet laid the veil of perfection over their works.

The ambivalence of the unfinished: between intimacy and arrogance

The unfinished one holds a promise: it allows us to gain an insight into the artist’s workshop, to experience the essence of his work directly. Unfinished works appear raw, direct, authentic – as if the artist had taken off the mask for a moment. But the fragment reveals not only intimacy, but also arrogance or failure. the big onesRuins of art history, the failed major projects, tell of human hubris and failure at their own demands. Unlike the intentional fragment of the Romantics, the involuntary fragment does not refer to a higher transcendence, but to the limitations of human abilities – and the impossibility of achieving the absolute.

The hope for the infinite: no end, no end point

Behind our fascination for the fragment is the wish that nothing ever has to be completed. Every find, every sketch, every design, every unfinished work keeps the promise that it could go on and on, that the story never ends. The point at the end of a work becomes an impertinence that we reject. But just at the moment of the end, the room forFantasy, for myth, for new possibilities. The unfinished one remains open, invites you to dream and keeps the hope that the best might still be ahead of us. In the world of fragments, we do not celebrate failure, but the infinite possibility – while remaining realistic and dreamy, enthusiastic about the unfinished and tirelessly looking for thenext fragment that will amaze us.