There’s an endless conundrum in the arts between the relationship of an artist and their own work. Who ought to be superior, the work or the artist? What does it say about an artist to produce something whose quality exceeds their own ability?

The ability to repeat. This is another crucial aspect of the story that is present in every single one of the arts and their techniques. It has its echo in acting, for instance, a discipline where uniqueness and “spontaneity” is so often heralded as a virtue. Ingmar Bergman used to say that repetition was inherent to a great actor’s performance — their ability to reenact the nuance of a scene over and over, be it during rehearsals, stage representations, or shot after shot in cinema. A creator that has the ability to replicate again their own work means they are both in control of their skills and of the result, even when it may seem the result is just a natural effect. Legend has it Marlon Brando used to mumble many of his lines on set to force himself to act again during the later stages of voice recording, given the new context the edited sequence provided for improving a performance.

Oh, but how it is often said that there’s a sense of wonder and irreplicability that occurs precisely in those fine moments by the singular chance of the occasion! ¹

While filming Stalker, Tarkovsky had to shoot twice almost the entire film after finding a year’s worth of footage had been improperly developed at the laboratory, rendering the material unusable. He was in a similar situation again years later when he had to remake the complex and iconic sequence of his last film Sacrifice after the camera broke during shooting. (Which involved rebuilding the house that burns down during the scene.) Devastating for moral, but a testament of his creative will.

When taste exceeds one’s ability. Considering it deeply, that should be the most gratifying reality a craftsman, artist, or creator in general could posses. It means their judgement is sophisticated enough that it allows them to indefinitely grow, to indefinitely improve their technique and refine their renditions. The ability to create is swayed by the capacity to perceive a work and know how to improve it.

Leonardo phrased it with eloquence when he wrote: “The painter who entertains no doubt of his own ability, will attain very little. When the work succeeds beyond the judgement, the artist acquires nothing; but when the judgement is superior to the work, he never ceases improving.”

If the work surpasses your own ability to judge it, it either means you’ve reached a ceiling when it comes to the refinement of your practice, or that the excellence of a work was done somehow by mistake — in a way despite its creator’s abilities. When taste is below the plenitude of the work the artist is inevitably left behind, a pale shadow of his own work. Yet when taste and judgement prevail, both the work and the creator’s abilities cannot but improve.