Sometimes when an artist is composing, there may be a piece that he or she is relatively happy with, though it contains a flaw that disrupts the flow of the work. Like one caulks a crack, the artist papers over the flaw with another effect, adding something new to the work in the process.
Or the artist simply leaves the flaw. Marcel Duchamp's The Large Glass is famous for - among other things - the spiderweb of cracks in the glass itself. He felt that a work of art was a continuous entity that went through a process of alchemy far after the artist finished it (thanks John).
I'm a sucker for these flaws. For the pops in a composition, or the botched note in a music piece (Jimi Hendrix once joked that people copied everything about his playing, even his mistakes). For the air bubbles in the glass. For the dimples and cracks in the rock, that sort of thing.
I remember when I was learning to make 3D levels in a video game, I studied other map-makers works and was amused to find that they did things like strategically place buildings or a moon or clouds in the background to obscure the seams in the horizon - graphics are much more sophisticated now but then everything was built inside a cube.
I think that is part of what makes many modern mass produced works so distasteful. There is this drive for sterile perfection. Instead of this haphazard building process (well it doesn't have to be haphazard, but you know what I mean), this organic creation of an object, there is a disciplined process of brutal repetition until each component fits together flawlessly and seamlessly, like an officer's uniform. It betrays a fetish for the object itself, a myopic vision of creation, and a profound insecurity.
The seamless monolith has no features to fall for. No flaws to love. It is the flaws that accentuate the beauty.
