Every arrangement decides what counts.
Into each of these I put a body that does not work — a limb that ends, an arm where no arm should be, a face cut in two. None of it is a machine error. I asked for it.
What interests me is not the flaw. It is that nothing changes.
The composition absorbs it. The balance holds, the colours hold, the image goes on being exactly as beautiful as it would have been with a whole body. Looking, you notice the anomaly and move past it — not because it is hidden, but because the beauty has no need of it.
This ought to be reassuring. It does not feel that way to me.
If a harmony holds without the integrity of what it contains, then either the eye accepts the flaw — or it was never really looking. And if that is so, what was the aesthetic for?
