The Plagiarist
copypasty
Ideally, a critic is simply someone who has chosen an independent path for himself, to think critically about matters of conscience --art, politics, society, religion, etc-- and to submit his thoughts publicly. No public discourse can be of any value if it isn't sustained by critical thinking and the professional (or even the amateur) critic merely applies this principle cogently to the issue at hand.
Criticism should be constructive and destructive; it should be sublime and hit you like a blast from a fire hose; it should celebrate excellence and scorn mediocrity; it should posit standards that others can argue with; it should exhibit the absolute uniqueness of an individual sensibility and universalize its point of view; it should be all of these things and more.
The most obvious difference between a critic and a reviewer is simply this: A reviewer is usually one considered consumer-oriented, whose observations and comments are shallow and commonplace. He is usually hired to represent a middle-of-the-road demographic consensus (The Average Consumer,) and his taste and his expression of his taste is predictably dull-witted.
The critic, on the other hand, is an individual, idiosyncratic voice, who has cultivated his sensibility to such an extent that his subjectivity takes on an authority equal to the (outstanding) artist himself (thus becoming, in Wilde's words, the critic as artist). It’s through his own subjectivity that he forces us to see things we wouldn't have seen otherwise, or to at least consider a point of view with which we might ultimately disagree but the consideration of which proves valuable.
I would go so far as to say that the critic has become more valuable than ever in an age of unrestrained hype on both the private and corporate level and in a world whose profit-minded manipulation of taste has become practically totalitarian.
It was Matthew Arnold who said "Poetry is the Criticism of Life" and in those six words expressed the infinitely complex and necessary link among art, criticism, and life.
Criticism should be constructive and destructive; it should be sublime and hit you like a blast from a fire hose; it should celebrate excellence and scorn mediocrity; it should posit standards that others can argue with; it should exhibit the absolute uniqueness of an individual sensibility and universalize its point of view; it should be all of these things and more.
The most obvious difference between a critic and a reviewer is simply this: A reviewer is usually one considered consumer-oriented, whose observations and comments are shallow and commonplace. He is usually hired to represent a middle-of-the-road demographic consensus (The Average Consumer,) and his taste and his expression of his taste is predictably dull-witted.
The critic, on the other hand, is an individual, idiosyncratic voice, who has cultivated his sensibility to such an extent that his subjectivity takes on an authority equal to the (outstanding) artist himself (thus becoming, in Wilde's words, the critic as artist). It’s through his own subjectivity that he forces us to see things we wouldn't have seen otherwise, or to at least consider a point of view with which we might ultimately disagree but the consideration of which proves valuable.
I would go so far as to say that the critic has become more valuable than ever in an age of unrestrained hype on both the private and corporate level and in a world whose profit-minded manipulation of taste has become practically totalitarian.
It was Matthew Arnold who said "Poetry is the Criticism of Life" and in those six words expressed the infinitely complex and necessary link among art, criticism, and life.
