ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the unfinished as a cultural and historical idea, in the light of the contemporary pre-occupation with the finished state as the only viable mode of representation. In our age that gives overwhelming priority to the manipulative techniques in image production – with their affectations of unalterable completion – it is extremely difficult to find situations where the processes of emergent form can be ‘measured’, experientially, through momentary encounter or contemplative observance. Without the ambiguity that the unfinished furnishes in human experience, as we witness for example in a building under construction or the performance of an incomplete symphony, the receptiveness to new possibilities is prematurely circumvented for the sake of efficiency and constancy.
