imperfections
The monotonous perfection
The mathematical physicist must simplify in order to get a manageable model, and although his concepts are of great beauty, they are austere in the extreme, and the more complicated crystal patterns observed by the metallurgist or geologist, being based on partly imperfect reality, often have a richer aesthetic content. Those who are concerned with structure on a super atomic scale find that there is more significance and interest in the imperfections in crystals than in the monotonous perfection of the crystal lattice itself.
The aesthetic potential of flaws
The archaeological quality of this section of exposed wall provides an example of the aesthetic potential of that which is flawed or broken.
A Painted Karatsu as Food for Thought
Recently there is a tendency to pursue distortion in art, but in the case of this jar, natural deformation has raised distortion to the level of spontaneous beauty.
The Japanese Perspective
An Essay from The Beauty of Everyday Things by Yanagi SōetsuGenerally speaking, the Western perception of art has its roots in Greece. For a long time its goal was perfection, which is particularly noticeable in Greek sculpture. This was in keeping with Western scientific thinking; there are no painters like Andrea Mantegna in the East. I am tempted to call such art ‘the art of even numbers’.
In contrast to this, what the Japanese eye sought was the beauty of imperfection, which I would call ‘the art of odd numbers’. No other country has pursued the art of imperfection as eagerly as Japan.
Is perfection boring?
An Article by Ralph AmmerWe love to see the process, not just the result. The imperfections in your work can be beautiful if they show your struggle for perfection, not a lack of care.
Hackers and Painters
A great painting has to be better than it has to be
This sounds like a paradox, but a great painting has to be better than it has to be. For example, when Leonardo painted the portrait of Ginevra de Benci in the National Gallery, he put a juniper bush behind her head. In it he carefully painted each individual leaf. Many painters might have thought, this is just something to put in the background to frame her head. No one will look that closely at it.
Not Leonardo. How hard he worked on part of a painting didn't depend at all on how closely he expected anyone to look at it. He was like Michael Jordan. Relentless.
Relentlessness wins because, in the aggregate, unseen details become visible. When people walk by the portrait of Ginevra de Benci, their attention is often immediately arrested by it, even before they look at the label and notice that it says Leonardo da Vinci. All those unseen details combine to produce something that's just stunning, like a thousand barely audible voices all singing in tune.
Great software, likewise, requires a fanatical devotion to beauty. If you look inside good software, you find that parts no one is ever supposed to see are beautiful too.