【Flyer杀G作文组】7月16日Issue144-By Candygege

candygegeUID: 2792059

144."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.
分类：艺术
Words:592

YiMou Zhang, one of the great contemporary Chinese directors, having successful directed the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Opening ceremony, has said in the book Talking with YiMou Zhang, that nothing is important for an artist than understanding and being understood. Without understanding others, the artists will exhaust and lack of inspiration to create; as well as without being understood by others, their art works cannot be accepted by the society, then the values of these works can not be realized, too. Creating valuable art is the artist's work, yet helping public understanding this value is mostly depend on the critic, who seems like a bridge to communicate between artist and common people by evaluating the works of art. Hence, the merits of an art work is not only controlled by the artist, but also the critic.
   Critics can help us understand and interpret art. Arts, simply like a special language, composed by colors, tunes, words and so on. Not every one can truly understand the arts' meaning, so we need a critic who is familiar with a particular artist and his or her works might have certain insights about those works that layman would not, to evaluate the art work in order to serving as a filter which helps us determine which art is worth our time and attention. In addition, the critic can also provide feedbacks for artists, and constructive criticism, which is the process of offering valid and well-reasoned opinions about the work of others with the intention of helping the artists rather than creating an oppositional attitude, if taken to heart, can result in better works.
   But on the other hand, limited by many factors like the time, circumstance, personal experience and characters, critics probably mislead populace by a subjective estimate, concealing the true valuable arts or boosting unworthness ones. It is known that many famous and celebrated artists were not recognized by the art critics of their time, often because their art was in a style not yet understood or favored, like Jane's Gone with the Wind, or Van Gogh' Sunflowers. A further example for this argument is Marla Olmstead, who had an exhibition of her pictures when she was only four years old in 2005 in New York. Her works were boosted by critics, yet aroused an argument in public as well. A lot of person, me included, doubt whether a four-year old girl has such profound thinking that create valuable drawing worth much money. Marla's mom said to the journalist that Marla drew just for fun, even no direct evidence support that these pictures are drew by Marla herself. Maybe she is a genius or something else, but what I want to emphasis is that critics play important parts in this case, guiding people's behaviors and attitudes, even probably beyond the art works own values. They serve as a translator which help us understand the original work but inevitably adds their our understandings no matter how objective he/she looks like. Maybe we can say that the value of an art work to the society is created by both artists and critics.
   A pearl is just a round stone to the person who never know pearls. So as the art work, no matter how worthy it is, is just a common to the person who have no idea about the work. Thus, we need the artist to create the value of art works, and then we also need the critic to interpret the value to the whole society. Both of them give society something of lasting values.