When is art finished?

More of an open discussion than an article

When you’re working on something creative, how do you know it’s done?

See, this is a personal dilemma I find myself in now. I have a very, very, nebulous writing project that just refuses to say “when.”

I’ve been working on something that is very short, but at the same time, very long.

If you are writing, when do you know you’ve finished a project, like FINISHED-finished?

No, I’m really asking. I am desperate to have this project under my belt and would love to hear from my fellow craftsmen and artists.

If you are painting, when are the final touches done being applied? Is it an internal feeling or an external circumstance? When you are sculpting or recording, how many times do you chip away at a sculpture or add to a song when it already seems like a full piece?

For me, it’s all confusing. Writing nonfiction or essays always seems to have it’s own end point.

To me, there’s an external and an internal element.

In a lot of cases, we are academically taught when the piece we are working on is finished, what the signs look like, what steps have to be taken at the end of the creative process, and how to vet the effectiveness of our work as a whole. In reality though, it’s kind of left up to a feeling.

A feeling of completion? Just an emptiness that signifies that everything was left on the canvas, page, track, etc.?

Maybe I’m waxing too poetically about the subject, but I think each serious artist has to contend with this problem at some point in their journey.

Do we all end up writing “The End” for our own personal reasons, or is there a sequence that just runs its course before we can call it?

Also… what if you don’t want it to be over? What then? What are we getting out of the experience that we are reluctant to let end? Or perhaps we know the end and just aren’t ready to face it?

I think my point is, artists ultimately decide when a piece of art is finished… because it could just go on forever.

If you never stop creating one particular thing, reveling in the experience of creating it, it’s still just a work-in-progress until the end of the author’s life.

Maybe what I’m really trying to say is that… art is never really finished. It’s just kind of stopped at some point, and it’s up to someone to decide when that point is.

Some art is more esoteric - abstract - and ends quickly enough, making that the point. Others are filled to the brim with world-building, accents of color, Easter eggs, and compendiums galore before the author is forced to put down the pen.

When it is presented for wider consumption: is that a signal that it is “good enough” to be considered finished? Are we, as consumers of media and art, truly seeing something that is finished, or perhaps it could be some half-baked attempt at a much wider vision by the creator?

So, by my own estimation, all art is just something we are witnessing that could be taken even further.

All art is incomplete. It just refuses to be more than what it is. Whoever chooses to present it as is with no further elaboration or decoration is the ultimate creator of the piece, I suppose.

If it’s an indie author, most likely, you’re reading something actually by the author. If it’s a web serial or limited series, it’s likely the final work of the network, since they make the budget and the time constraints. If it’s a blockbuster movie franchise, it’s some TV writer and editor’s amalgamation of some other author or comic writer’s original work.

That is the person who ultimately sends the message of the art - what it’s meant to teach us, meant to show us, or connect with us as consumers of art.

Though, I like the term “patrons of art” better as a concept, let’s call us what we are: we are consumers. And perhaps, consumers are being treated as a final authority on endings a little too closely - or we think we should be.

This isn’t meant to be a jab at people who are mourning the end of a beloved series or franchise that changed the way they see art or the human psyche, and I am by no means devaluing their take on what could have done to wrap the characters and story-lines up in a nice, satisfying bow; just that, all art must find its ending through someone’s perspective, no matter if we agree with that perspective or not.

Or perhaps not? Haven’t we all wondered what something might have been like from our own estimation of the ending of something that didn’t end the way we wanted? Have you ever been grateful something ended differently than what you expected?

Are we thinking our contribution to art as its consumers is too important than it really should be? Whose opinion or take on the end of a beloved piece of art are we truly disagreeing with (to put it mildly in some cases)?

As a creative person, I can see how the ending is simultaneously the entire point of a piece and yet entirely dependent on factors that might be out of our hands.

Good art can be agreed upon by a list of factors, but art as a practice, as an experience, just doesn’t have one. It could go on forever if you let it.

Even the art we love, revere, or just enjoy as consumers could have evolved and elaborated into something entirely different if the artist had decided otherwise. And we shall never know what it could have been, only what it is.

So, art is forever, because its ending is subjective, like it’s meaning, its purpose, and its license to exist in the first place.

Which is why endings are so difficult. Or maybe not. If you have finished something recently and felt just… nothing - relief at having it in its form and nothing more - I’d love to hear about that experience.

Am I overthinking this process? Am I about to finish something tantamount to a magnum opus, or am I just experiencing growing pains?

Come what may, let’s remember that we are the authors of our art and its fate, unless we relinquish that power to someone else. Making peace with an ending is a rite and privilege that all of us should be able to experience at least once in our journeys.

Don’t you agree?

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