The Critical Mindset

It has become natural in recent years to approach everything with a critical mindset. People seem to think that just appreciating something is too simpleminded and that being critical of everything one encounters is a sign of discernment and distinction. As someone who used to be mired in this mindset, I hereby challenge it. I submit that the critical mindset is misguided and destructive. When applied to art, it harms both the process of artistic creation and a person’s ability to appreciate art.

I am not referring to “critical thinking”, which is an important skill and, despite its name, does not actually involve criticism. When you are a critical thinker, you don’t unquestioningly accept what you read or hear; you first ask yourself whether it is believable. You demand mathematical proof, experimental evidence, logical consistency, or supporting arguments. The ability to think critically is important in science, in art, and in life. Many of the problems in the world today are either caused or exacerbated by people unquestioningly believing what they are told.

The “critical mindset”, in contrast, is all about criticism. It is based on a belief that criticism is necessary for improving the state of the world. According to this mindset, criticism, when delivered with good intentions, is constructive; we must not only criticize others but willingly accept criticism from others. There is, however, no such thing as constructive criticism. Criticism is always destructive.

When one has a critical mindset, it is not enough just to read a novel. First, one must make sure one understands it completely. One must understand what the writer was aiming to achieve and how the writer tried to achieve it. Then, once one has understood everything about the work, one must make critical comments. One must state, in a blog article, a book review, or a book-club meeting, all the problems with the work, all the ways in which the writer could have done better and failed.

According to this mindset, the critic is superior to the artist. The artist is someone who makes something and presents it to the public for approval, a fool who attempts and fails to achieve perfection. The critic, in contrast, stands above the act of creation and renders judgment on it. Our society respects the critic far more than the artist, whom it views with a thinly veiled contempt. At best, the artist is a madman, a genius who bumbles through life, creating great things without understanding what he is doing, and destroying himself in the process.1 The critic is far more dignified, respectable, and valuable. The critic tells us which works of art have succeeded and which ones have failed. According to our society, it is the critic who understands art, not the artist.2

Ironically, the critic is not open to criticism. The critic criticizes but does not get criticized. If an artist dares to criticize a critic, the artist comes across as defensive and pathetic. In reality, the artist is brave, whereas the critic is a coward. Pouring one’s soul into a work of art and opening oneself up to criticism takes courage. Criticizing does not.

Years ago, I, too, used to write book reviews. I was not a professional critic; I just posted my thoughts on a web site for book lovers. I harboured no illusions that anyone read my reviews; I wrote them mostly for myself. It felt virtuous to write a critique. It made me feel as though I was intelligent and valuable and had accomplished something worthwhile. Reading a book without writing a critical review afterwards seemed too easy, too ephemeral, too self-indulgent.

Another reason I wrote reviews was that I found myself forgetting the books I had read. Writing a review made me feel that I was holding on to my experience of reading the book, that I was recording my thoughts about the parts of the book that mattered. This is similar to the way taking a photograph of a famous work of art makes one feel as though one were holding on to the experience of viewing the work of art. In both cases, one kids oneself. Looking at a photograph of a work of art is not the same as standing in front of the actual work of art. And if you try reading a book review you wrote years ago, it will mean nothing to you unless you read the book again. If you do read the book again, you will probably find that you no longer agree with your previous review. The parts of the book that spoke to you the first time you read it will not be the parts that speak to you now. You are no longer the same person.

If the critical mindset only caused people to waste their time writing and reading reviews, it would be one thing. A more serious problem with this mindset is that it interferes with art appreciation. In the case of visual art, we are dealing with a visual medium. As social beings who spend most of our day communicating via the written or the spoken word, most of us are more comfortable with words than we are with drawings and paintings. We fail to realize that a drawing or painting is not something that is expressible in words. The moment we begin to criticize a work of art, we are applying words and logic to it and are no longer seeing it the way it was intended to be seen.

I am not saying that you must like every work of art you encounter. Just as you are under no obligation to like and be friends with every person you meet, you are free to dislike a work of art. But when you criticize a work of art, you are throwing mud at someone who has done something you did not do yourself, something you almost certainly could not have done yourself. It is easy to find fault with a work of art. An artist—a writer, filmmaker, actor, musician, or painter—is a mere human. What they create is necessarily imperfect. Pointing out its imperfections does not require great intelligence, talent, or skill.

Years ago, whenever I worked on a painting, I would worry about all the ways in which a critic could attack the painting. As I worked, potential criticisms would pop into my head, and I would modify or “correct” the painting to render it invincible, to protect it from all the attacks I could foresee. But I found that this killed my paintings. A painting that looked fresh, vibrant, and evocative while I was in the midst of it would look dead by the end. I no longer try to remove vulnerabilities from my paintings. Like a human, a painting, if it is to touch someone, needs to be vulnerable. The problem with much of the visual art that is out there these days is that it is not vulnerable. It is clad in an armour of incomprehensibility that protects it from criticism. If someone criticizes the work, the artist can say the critic didn’t understand it. But although the work may resist criticism, it is not alive; it is not bold; it is not lovable.

Criticism kills. Even before it draws its sword from its sheath, it kills the work of art by making its creator fear its blows. And it kills the enjoyment that the critic, as well as everyone who listens to the critic, could have had were they to approach the work with openness, with curiosity, and with love. When an artist creates a work of art, the artist is aiming it at a person who will accept it as it is, who will embrace it, who will appreciate it in spite of its flaws. A work of art comes from a human and has something human about it. Just as one can love another human in spite of that human’s imperfections, one can love and appreciate a work of art in spite of its imperfections.

Prior to realizing the destructiveness of the critical mindset, I didn’t just write reviews. I also read reviews. Whenever I read a book, saw a play, or watched a film, I would immediately go online to read what others had written about it. I no longer do that. I resist the temptation. I may miss some symbolism in the work, or the meaning of something obscure, but I’m OK with that. By not reading negative reviews, I don’t ruin the delightful afterglow of the work. One does not have to understand a work completely to appreciate it. Indeed, if a work is able to be completely understood, it is not a good work of art. What matters is how the work makes one feel, the images it creates in one’s mind, the connections it leads one to form in one’s brain.

As much as I enjoy interacting with people who visit my studio, I am always a little dismayed when a visitor is so immersed in the critical mindset that they are unable to look at and experience my paintings. Even when someone is not critical but curious, I feel conflicted about responding to their curiosity verbally instead of letting them just look at the work. Often, people ask me a lot of questions, a lot of good questions, and I appreciate their interest and enjoy the challenge of answering their questions. I fear, however, that all the talking ultimately takes away from the experience I am trying to provide with my paintings. My paintings stand on their own; they don’t need words or explanations. There is no need to ask questions. There is no need to understand what everything means. There is no need even to understand my artistic process. Everyone who looks at my paintings experiences them in the light of their own life experiences, in the light of the places they’ve been and the things they’ve seen. That is good enough. It is all I want.

  1. The pronoun is intentional. Our society does not view women as artists. I might write more about this later. ↩︎
  2. Unlike professionals in every other field of endeavour, artists are not treated as authorities on art. When I, an artist, say something about art that goes against the conventional wisdom, people usually conclude that I don’t understand art. ↩︎