issue144 artists vs critics?[自由女神小组第14次作业]

hedou992UID: 2199425

TOPIC: ISSUE144 - "It is the artist, not the critic,* who gives society something of lasting value."
*a person who evaluates works of art, such as novels, films, music, paintings, etc.
WORDS: 545         TIME: 上午 120mins         DATE: 2007-2-11

Artist, who creates masterpieces contained something of lasting value to society, plays an important role in the process of finding out beauty of the world and activating people to pursue the beauty. Critic may help people to appreciate and understand the arts' value when the art is profound and complex. So both artist and critic weigh a lot in producing lasting value to our society.

First of all, artists are the critical factor to produce lasting value because that all of great arts are produced by artists rather than critics or some other people. Arts are created to convey the artists' feeling about beauty or some other emotion that can not be expressed through language or characters. It can not only bring us the feeling of beauty, peace and even shock, in further, but it can also active or inspire people to pursue the beauty and peace and to think about the insight meaning contained in the great arts. However, if there is no artist, arts would be fantasy. Say, without Raphael, we will not feel the sanctity and great of the Madonna; without Beethoven, we can not touch the passion of one’s living; without Hemingway, the saying-one can be defeated, but can not broke out-can not inspire the people in bad conditions; without Bartholdi and Eiffel, Statue of liberty will not exist let alone to inspire people to pursue liberty and democracy as a icon of America. In brief, artists are the base to produce lasting value, for it is artists who create the arts not critics or other people.

Secondly, critics are indispensable in our process of appreciate arts. Critics, who have particular knowledge about a special artist or a unique period in history, can help common people to discern the great or poor arts and to evaluate them in a professional way, even better to explain them in a plain way. So that people can pay more attention on the true great arts rather than enormous poor arts (if they can call arts). In addition, critics can find out the value of a true art while the common people can not appreciate. Let’s take Van Gogh as an example. Why his works come back to the world after many years he died? To me, I think it is critics who first found out his work’s concealing meaning and introduced to the world. Then common people began to accept them as great arts. Without great critics his works may be unknown even now. Therefore, critics also play a positive function in producing lasting value.

At last, critics also have many types-great or poor-just as well as artists. We should not require all critics always be objective, effective and fairly to certain arts, for they are persons who have their own emotion or preference. We should evaluate critics in a critical way just as they do this to the artists. However, we can not doubt that it is great artists together with great critics that create the lasting value to society.

To conclude, artists create the great arts which may convey the lasting value to society, and critics help people to understand the value and to promulgate it around the world. So it is artists together with critics who give the society lasting value.