[phoenix]ISSUE144（艺术家和评论家 9号）

NEU公孙轩辕UID: 2697609

It is the artist, not the critic, who gives society something of lasting value.

After analyzing the statement, I conceive it completely neglect the significant role of critics in giving society something of value, and greatly exaggerates the contributions made by artists. From my viewpoint, I agree with the statement insofar as that artists have made great contributions to the society, while disagree with the ignorance of the function of critics.

Admittedly, there is no denying that it is the artists who create those artistic works of inestimable values. Without these artistic works serving as the foundation, the critic cannot possible to make comments which are possible of significant importance. Figuratively, to some extent, the relationship of artistic works and comments is just like that the foundation of a building. Hence, when comes to talking about the lasting value of artistic works, we should never ignore the tremendous contributions made by artists.

However, we have got to realize that artists cannot guarantee their artistic works could be knew and appreciated by the common people. The critic is just this kind of people to interpret and propagate the meaning and essence of those artistic works, which helps to shorten the probably gap between the public and artists. For instance, Records of the Grand Historian, the greatest Chinese historical records, has been imposed far-reaching influence on Chinese culture mainly resulting from the extraordinary efforts made by numerous critics to interpret and propagate. Another example, the brilliant literature values of Dream of the Read Chamber, one of the Four Great classical Chinese novels, are discovered and spread widely just by numbers of critics and scholars. Accordingly, without the unremitting and miraculous efforts of critics, the great values of some artistic works may probably be ignored or omitted by both the public and the whole society.

In addition, granted that the common people can get access to artistic works created by artists, there still exits a problem that whether those artistic works accordant with society’s customs and people’s moral standards. From this point of view, critics also serve as the supervisor and conductor of the development of art. Consider the photographic exhibition of nude models, once arose fiercely contention in China and was slammed by many domestic critics due to this kind of “art” contradicts people’s moral standards and social customs. Hence, critics are still indispensable considering this point. However, another problem worthy
to consider is whether critics’ comments are reasonable and just. It is well know that some critics nowadays incline to be affected by money and other temptations to make irresponsible and even unjust comments. Albeit existing this phenomenon, it is still unreasonable, even unfair to completely neglect the contributions of critics.

In sum, as I has been discussed above, critic actually have been serving as an indispensible and significant character of giving the society something of lasting value, although there exists some deficiencies of them.