【喜洋洋杀G大队】wu-intrepi,第八次作业

wu-intrepidUID: 2659758

这篇文章超难，感觉我极其不会写艺术...

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


Human beings are artistic creature. It is arts that create such a abundant and beautiful world. In this world, people get their lasting value such as beauty, innovation and humanity from arts. While people immersed in their aesthetic experience, they should not forget critics' work who provide insightful perspectives for people to understand arts. For that reason, both artists and critics create this world.

Firstly, it is undeniable that artists' works always have complicated connotation which is in advance of its age. Critics therefore are needed to tell people what is the main idea of this artistic work and why it is beneficial for our  time. Henrik Ibsen, a major playwright in 19th-century, wrote the famous play A Dull's House. This play describes the process of Nora's self-discovery and at the end, Nora left her family and pursue herself in her own life. This play can be regarded as a very beginning of feminism. Unfortunately, nothing was more holy than the covenant of marriage in that time. So Ibsen's play is totally unacceptable, although it provide so precious value to people especially to women. However, a few more critics considered Ibsen's play as a examination to that society without prejudice. Their evaluation helped more and more people to accept that play and find the meaning and value. Today, A Dull's House can be acted without changing to a happy ending as Ibesn used to do under pressure. Critics' works make the value spreaded effectively.

Secondly, we cannot
find objective criterions to judge a artistic work , so critics' evaluations are important for most people who is not professional. Impressionism is hard to understand, because they abandoned traditional ideas and formulas such as greys and greens and abandoned traditional formal compositions instead of a more causal and less contrived disposition. So many people cannot get the point what is the impressionistic painting want to express. In this situation, critics' evaluation will help people understand why impressionism have such a significant impact and how paintings represent the transformation of modern society. Thus, if impressionism or other forms of arts give us any value, for example, to unshackle us from dogmatism, we should recognize that critics' contributions cannot be ignored.

What is more, great arts in history are came from critics' election. Most people do not understand the idea and artists' caring about our society. So critics may became a standard to judge wether an artistic work is excellent or not. If there are no critics in history，abstruse arts may had already been forgot by people. On the other hand, critics are always playing Socrates and their question help both artists to better their works and people to understand. Contemporary art became controversial because their manifestation mode. For example, the most controversial artwork, Virgin Mary by Chris Ofili, even used elephant dung. Wether these artworks will be accepted or not depend on critics' evaluation.

To sum up, critics play a important role in the contribution of the value of artwork to our society. Especially in this time, artwork are divorce from religion, and they enter into public sphere with blood and something weird. Will these artwork which mix with secular symbols win the same respect as their ancestors used to get. It depend on critics too. So without critics, the value of artist may disappear in the long stream of history.