Yet the meaning of an image is a lot more than that. We work to master objective “image quality” so that we will have those tools available for when they are appropriate to our meaning. Some photographs benefit from a full tonal range, deep depth-of-field and sharp detail, while these qualities are irrelevant to other, perhaps more meaningful images. The artist chooses what is relevant and not relevant to the meaning they wish to convey….and often that’s a matter of selectively cutting out all distractions.

Which is a long way of agreeing with you, that if your goal is beauty, that’s a much different thing than any objective “image quality”, which should be noticeable only when it serves an expressive purpose.