I’ve been thinking off and on during the day about the question raised by my small grandson, as to why art cannot be perfect. There are some complex issues here, but it did strike me that there is at least one interesting angle to be considered.
It is possible to define a perfect square. There are only two things to be considered. Does the quadrilateral in question have four angles each of 90 degrees? Are the sides straight? If both of these criteria are satisfied then there is no doubt that the figure in question is a “perfect square”.
Kasimir Malevich’s Black Square* might well be a perfect square according to these criteria, but that doesn’t make it a perfect work of art. Don’t be misled in this by the description of it as “perfectly black”, because this description tells us only that the image is uniformly black , and not that it satisfies what Malevich himself called “aesthetic feeling” in a perfect way. It is the question-mark hanging over that last phrase that makes me think that no work of art could ever be perfect.
Having rehearsed this argument, however, I am given pause for thought by my memory of standing front of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s statue of Daphne and Apollo, in the Borghese Gallery in Rome, for long enough to cause my wife to be worried about me.
*The first of four versions was painted in 1915.