I think I have discovered why the prissy, even though it should be the opposite, are usually such slobs. In a certain way, prissiness is a lack of aesthetic rigour and slobbiness is a lack of higienic rigour. It is the lack of rigour that manifests in different ways. Without rigour there is no art. That is why art and prissiness are incompatible.
Artistic rigour, like everything in art, is not just rigour like that. It is more like a free rigour, if that exists. Art hides a truth that it can’t show, because it would betray its etimology, but that has to be there, because if it isn’t, it wouldn’t be art. It is like a sort of dance with reality, closer, further, as if painting a painting. Close to add the brushstroke, far to see how it looks. And in that dance it connects with profound truths through the creation of invented realities. The balance is delicate. Too real and it is not art. Too false and it is not art either.
I don’t believe truth exists. But I think it is important to search for it. Without truth we can’t live. And perhaps rigour is precisely the key. Rigour is a kind of truth, a kind of coherence. Then one can be rigurous or coherent in many ways. And the prissy, with a bit of luck, will stay behind.
Illustration from the Feminist Gooseneck Barnacles Series.
“What a thrill”