It’s hard to face criticism, especially when it comes from someone you’ve never met, and who probably only experienced your work in the first place because they were paid to do so.
No wonder so many artists are quick to denounce critics as faceless abominations, rampaging their way through a key moment in a career that may just perish upon their pointed words.
It’s an understandable reaction. An emotional reaction. But is it logical? Is it fair to reduce the role of the critic to the impact they have on the artist?
What came first: the artist or the critic?
Criticism is as old as art itself. That really shouldn’t come as a surprise. Humans, by nature, are critical beings, constantly searching for ways to improve and evolve.
What may surprise you, however, is that the original critics were not the wretched few who looked upon the great minds of their civilisations with jealousy and disdain, but the great minds themselves. The father of Indian theatrical arts, Bharata Muni, took aim at the ancient work of his nation, while in Greece, Plato was attacking poetry. Not poets themselves, but the entire form, which he considered imitative and weak. His pupil, Aristotle, went on to define the concepts of mimesis and catharsis, which play as an integral part in criticism today as they ever did.
Over time, criticism has changed. It has become less about the what, and more about the why. Critics, like audiences, are on a quest for understanding of authorial intent. When they discover it, they champion it. When it is not knowable, or left found wanting, they react accordingly.
Amongst these critics, once again, are the artists themselves.
Abstract expressionist Barnett Newman started out writing catalogue forewords. Dario Argento started writing professional reviews while in high school, then went on to write and direct such films as Once Upon a Time in the West and Dawn of the Dead. Neil Gaiman was so excited to have the opportunity to work as a film critic that he later told tales of recurring nightmares in which the job was taken from him.
Their stories are far removed from the myths of critics as failed artists; myths that do an injustice to the responsibility of critics as cultural responders.
What many reductively define as a critic’s “subjectivity” is, in fact, a means test for artistic progress. Of course critics have biases, but their positions as communicators transforms it into common ground for their audience, who shares the critic’s mindset and sensibilities.
“So what?” you may be asking. “If society gets rid of critics the audience can just make their own minds up about whether to see a film, buy a record, or visit an exhibition.”
In my previous position as the Program Director for a film festival, I saw what happens when artist’s work isn’t moderated by criticism. I watched films produced on the life savings of their cast and crew; films that were never in a position to establish the careers of those involved. The filmmaker’s just didn’t realise it, because everyone who they’d showed it to in the past had patted them on the back and told them how great their movie was.
The viewers weren’t lying with intent, and that was the worst thing about it. These filmmakers and their peers – there were dozens of them in this one community alone – had banded together to support each other, and as a result refused to accept external criticism. They’d set a benchmark for their work, but it was so low that outside of the group the films would never find an audience.
Without critics, we face this same threat of stagnation on a much greater scale.
“I think authors are allowed to point out errors of fact in a negative review, if they really have to and it’s important to them,” Gaiman once said. “And otherwise we should swear loudly to ourselves, probably startling our cats, then we should keep our mouths shut, and go and write other things. Because I think it’s a good thing that people don’t like everything we do.”
I say the above as a fellow artist. I say it as someone who has faced such ill-informed analysis of their work that they wondered how they could ever go on.
But then I found a way, and because I understood that the response I received was not personal, but instead intended to help me grow, my art was better for it.