ISSUE NO.144【六人行】by CrazyJoO

crazyjooUID: 2805124

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: 542
TIME: 00:45:00
DATE: 2010-8-5 11:31:47

Is it artists, not critic, who leave permanent value to us as the speaker claims? I disagree with this assertion since this statement unnecessarily trivializes the value of critic. Both artists and critics are indisputable for the improvement of arts. Without either of them many far-reaching masterpieces would not come to public, in other words, it is a mammoth loss for our society.


Admittedly, artists' work have great impact on our society more directly and significantly than critics' critique and commentary. We can appreciate the Beethoven's symphony without critics’ commentary since the melody of the symphony itself has strike huge resonance among the auditors. Likewise, we also enjoy ourselves by dancing with the beat of modern music such as hip pop or rock while totally ignore the position this song taken in billboard, which is merely a opinion from critics. Further, when it comes to some literature works which is intricate and hence hard to understand its content, we can turn to friends or book mates for help. Through discuss with people, we can gain a new perspective of the book. In this respect, critics seem to be dispensable at all.


However, in most artists' opinion, critics play a crucial role in their career. They serves to be a bridge between the inner world of artists and the public viewers since many arts works' content appear to be isolated from the reality and hard for common people to understand what connotation the artists really want to convey to us. The striking example involves the paintings drawn by surrealism or impressionism painters. Without the commentary below the paintings, people can hardly understand, not to mention treasure or merit the art work. For example, few people can tell anything meaningful from its abstract images and droll hue of “The Persistence of Memory" by Dali. What does the melting clock mean? What does the animal laying on the beach mean, which looks like a combination of horse and human organs? Most people can surly get no enjoyment of aesthetics from it. They cannot approach to the heart of this masterpiece until critics tell them the melting clock and the "animal" are embodiment of Dali's subconsciouness. The merit of this painting lies in the exceptional skills which make the invisible things visible.


Moreover, critics serves to facilitate the progress of arts.It is not uncommon to see that the credit of a movie includes many critics as well as artists. Moviemakers ask critics for guidance since critics know what a great movie should be and what viewers favor. Through such professional guidance, the director stands to gain a new vision of aesthetic and finally improve the quality of the movie. Further, many famous artists are also critics. Leonardo Da Vinci not only evaluates works of architecture and painting but also some scientific inventions. In fact, many artists in Renaissance benefit from Da Vinci's critiques; after all, many kinds of arts are essentially the same. Besides, green hands can also learn a lot from those veteran and critics. From those seemly ironic critiques, they can tell ugliness from beauty and begin to pursue the right things.


As shown above, to some extent, both artists and critics give society permanent value. It is presumptuous and unfair for the speaker to underestimate critics who might be comparatively obscure.