THE ARTIST AND THE CRITIC What’s common between them?
THE ARTIST AND THE CRITIC| WHAT’S COMMON BETWEEN THEM?
The Artist and the Critic are in the very nature of their roles set to have a history and lineage of opposition very much like a mother in law and a daughter in law. Just as the age old deeper complexes of a certain ownership over the son, psychologically will create issue which have to be thought about and ironed out in each one’s mind, so also will ownership over what is GOOD ART which could be writing, painting, photos music and so on, be a reason for an artist and critic to be in a relationship diametrically opposed.
Interestingly there are SO many COMMONALITIES between the artist and the critic.
1.They will always be in a way burdened with wanting to speak up for work that is good and against work that is not good. Pretty much like a banker who deals in foreign trade and sees a badly formatted letter of credit gets livid and can’t just not react, so also both artist and critic fume when they see bad works of art.
2. They both can soon become people who begin to RUN one tape in their heads which they COPY and PASTE everywhere. The artist begins to play the tape in his head which says ‘Noone really understands WHAT GOOD ART IS’ She/he has spent years of handling unfair rejection to then finally develop through the test of fire, a strong enough voice and confidence to THROW out her/his voice into the world and then find success based on a certain amount of talent in her/his field. And this very confidence can become her/his weakness over time and the artist will stop listening to anyone’s opinions COPY PASTING the same tape of ‘No on really understands what good art is’ onto anyone who disagrees in their opinions. In the case of the CRITIC, this exact same thing applies. The critic’s COPY PASTE tape is ‘No on can take good criticism and they only want YESMEN’. The critic has also spent years honing their views, recieving ridicule and rejection of their critique by artists far and wide and has taken very long to reach a stage where their views are respected. They finally reach a stage where those same artists who ridiculed them now crave their positive critique. But when they begin to do a COPY PASTE on everyone they forget that allowing a person to react to their criticism is as important as it is for the artist to allow people to react to her/his art. COPY PASTING in both cases rids the artist and critic of genuine people as they immediately shove anyone wiht the first sign of a difference in opinion away as the YESMEN craving category.
3. Both are sensitive enough to be actually affected by a reaction to their work: The artist is affected and takes in reactions to their work and loses sleep, is saddened, feels the pain of rejection of his work. The critic is affected by a negative reaction to their criticism and takes this in and feels the impulse to just throw it out but then tries to take in what she/he can.
4. On the face of it they both want to show that they are not affected by anyone else’s opinions and are battling it out in a world of YESMEN and people who put mediocre art on a pedestal.
[box_download]So, there are indeed so many commonalities between artists and critics and they can probably be great friends and develop a healthy relationship if they work at overcoming their impulse to COPY PASTE a certain agenda onto every interaction and if they bother to work at the age old relationship bias which stares them in the face and makes them feel like they’re on two sides of a fence.[/box_download]
