I wish we'd get back to discussing Michael's questions about error and quality -- or was it failure and quality? Michael should bring us up to date as he was the one who initiated the thread. Several Lister's tossed in their two cents but then we heard nothing more from Michael. I won't wonder why.
I think it's proper to discuss the two terms or concepts separately. Error and quality are not oppositional concepts. I'm not trying to enlist a Derridian delicacy of 'differance' when I say that. I mean the two concepts can exist in harmony or in opposition with equal ease. There are many examples of erroneous-on-purpose artworks across time and cultures. For example the Navajo idea that a woven blanket or rub must have a hanging thread or 'incorrect stitch' is to mitigate any thought of hubris or capability of perfection and is not limited to them. Or, it's easy to find examples of art aimed at a perfect expression of some concept, usually based on geometric proportions, an Ideal. The human body is the most widely recognized object among humans. Our brains are configured to enhance our sensual experience with humans far more than other creatures or objects. This is mainly a visual configuration with particular areas of the brain suited best to visual recognition and sensing of tiny variations of human posture and expression. The human brain has a large area devoted only to 'facial recognition'. The human face is loaded with muscles that have the most nuanced interlacing to the skin allowing extremely subtle movements and thus 'readings' of expression. The 'body-language' faction of psychology has attained a cult status. We human 'read' each other with extraordinary skill. Other animals rely mainly on smell and other means of recognizing their own kind and their environments. My point is that since humans are -- seemingly -- unconsciously visually alert to every tiny variation of human form and expression, there's a high likelihood that our concepts of aesthetics are based on the human form. This was what Gombrich thought although he resrticted the noton to the West. I think it covers all humankind. Certainly, cultures since early antiquity has been centered on the human form as the go-to physical source for aesthetic sensation and inquiry. We can trace various modes of artistic and expressive form through the representations of the human body from forcing it to fit a geometric template, as with the Near Eastern, Greek and the Renaissance artists/theorists to freeing it from canonical from as with the brief episode in MK Egypt (Ikhnaton reign) or with Gothic and then Baroque exaggeration and finally, modernist and postmodernist art. I suggest that we agree that the human body, in whatever guise, is the fundamental measure of aesthetic form. If we find error in art it is going to be the error of one model of the human body revealed by matching it with another preferred or customary model. It does not matter, in my view, how 'abstract' those models are since I happily regard all visual imagery to be a representation of the human form without exception. I think it is not only customary to do that, supported by any art historical viewpoint, but us also physiologically built-in or 'pre-wired' (as much as I hate that term being overused) with 'mirror neurons; that force us to imagine the other (anything at all, from pebbles to God) as if it were ourselves. The early Renaissance artists famously regarded their Gothic predecessors to be in great error. The Gothic mode of showing the human form was detached from bodily measurements which became the one true aim of Renaissance art (supplemented by the study of antiquity, anatomy and scientific perspective). Their predecessors put greater emphasis on expression, emotion, visualized through exaggerated 'body language. Either way, it's all human and human body. The question Michael wants answered is: What is error? if we look to art, whatever arts, we find that is is about the human body and thus error will occur when a representation of the human body avoids what we customarily expect or seek or, worse, misses any sensitivity to the human body in all its sensual capacities. WC
