I am not a critic.
I enjoy the arts.
I have never thought of myself as an artistic critic. I am, instead, an artistic enthusiast. Does that sound too pretentious?
When I hear the word critic, I think of someone approaching a work of art with a critical eye—someone trained to notice weaknesses, question choices, identify inconsistencies, and determine whether the work succeeds or fails. That kind of attention has real value. Serious criticism can deepen our understanding of art, challenge careless assumptions, and help artists and audiences see things they might otherwise overlook. I enjoy reading critics, even when I disagree with them.
But criticism is not my instinctive way of encountering art.
My first impulse is not to ask, “What is wrong with this?” It is to ask, “What is this trying to do?” I want to enter the world the artist has created. I want to understand its language, its intentions, its emotional logic, and the circumstances from which it emerged. I want to discover what is alive within it.
Most of all, I want to like it.
That does not mean I like everything, nor does it mean that I am incapable of recognizing flaws. Some works leave me cold. Others frustrate, disappoint, or even repel me. Enthusiasm does not require the abandonment of judgment. It simply means that judgment is not where I begin.
I begin with openness.
I want art to fill my soul and change my life. I want music to reveal an emotion I could not name. I want a painting to alter the way I see color, space, or the human face. I want a novel to allow me to inhabit another consciousness. I want theater to make a roomful of strangers breathe, laugh, grieve, or hope together.
To approach art primarily in search of defects would feel, to me, like entering a friendship by looking for reasons it will fail. I would rather begin by asking what a work might offer and what it might require of me. Perhaps I will eventually conclude that it does not succeed. But I want to give it the opportunity to speak before I begin arguing with it.
This disposition is probably connected to a broader tendency in my life. My primary urge is to look for commonalities rather than differences. I am drawn toward connections: between people, traditions, ideas, artistic styles, and historical periods. I notice distinctions, but I do not usually begin there. I begin by asking what might be shared.
The same is true when I encounter art that is unfamiliar to me. Rather than emphasizing the distance between the work and my own experience, I look for a point of entry. What human longing does it express? What fear, beauty, anger, grief, or joy might I recognize within it? Even the most experimental or culturally distant work may contain some gesture toward a common human experience.
Enthusiasm, however, does not always play well in academic or public discussions of art. Judgment often seems to carry greater intellectual prestige. It can appear more sophisticated to explain why Leonard Bernstein is overrated than to describe why his music moves us; more serious to criticize Norman Rockwell, Stephen King, or Neil Simon than to consider what their enormous audiences have found in their work. Suspicion is treated as evidence of discernment, while enthusiasm risks being mistaken for naïveté.
Perhaps this is because enthusiasm makes us vulnerable. To say that we love something is to reveal something about ourselves. Criticism, by contrast, can provide a position of safety and authority. The critic stands at a distance from the work and renders judgment upon it. The enthusiast admits that the work has crossed that distance and affected him.
I have encountered the more destructive form of criticism in artistic forums and symposiums. Participants did not merely describe their reactions to a work or question the choices behind it. They attacked. At one institution I attended, these sessions were known as the “Monday Night Fights.” The name was probably intended humorously, but it accurately described an atmosphere I found counterproductive, childish, and mean-spirited. Criticism had ceased to be a way of helping artists understand their work and had become a performance of aggression.
In Dave Eggers’s novel Contrapposto, the character Marcus Carpenter says, “Only when you have directed your anger toward the real demons of the world, its despots and tyrants, and have vanquished them all—only then can you attack another artist.”
The statement is intentionally extravagant, but I recognize the moral impulse behind it. The world already contains more than enough cruelty. Why should artists reproduce it in the very communities that are supposed to nurture creation? Why should intelligence be demonstrated through contempt? Why should one artist need to diminish another in order to establish seriousness or authority?
None of this means that every response must be praise. “This work did not resonate with me” is an entirely legitimate beginning, especially when it is followed by a thoughtful account of why. There is a difference between saying that a work did not reach us and declaring that it has no value. There is also a difference between questioning an artistic choice and questioning the intelligence, talent, or integrity of the person who made it.
Artists bear responsibility as well. Anyone who creates has probably experienced that sudden defensiveness—the feeling that criticism of the work is criticism of the self. I know that feeling. Creating something requires vulnerability, and it can be difficult to separate what we have made from who we are. We may feel attacked even when no attack was intended. We may reject useful criticism because it hurts.
But intention and manner still matter. Is the critic trying to take the artist down, or trying to help the artist take the next step? Does the response arise from curiosity and generosity, or from the desire to display superiority? Does the critic attempt to understand what the artist was trying to accomplish before announcing where the work has failed?
Helpful criticism may still be difficult to hear. It may identify genuine weaknesses. It may force an artist to reconsider decisions or confront limitations. But criticism offered in good faith treats the work seriously without treating the artist contemptuously. Its purpose is not to win a fight. Its purpose is to make greater understanding—and perhaps better art—possible.
Critics often help us distinguish. They clarify what is original and what is derivative, what is coherent and what is confused, what is skillful and what is merely fashionable. Enthusiasts perform a different function. We invite people in. We say, “Listen to this.” “Look at this.” “Read this.” “There is something here worth experiencing.”
A healthy artistic culture needs both impulses. It needs people willing to examine art rigorously, and it needs people willing to love it generously. It needs discernment, but it also needs wonder. Judgment without enthusiasm can become sterile or cruel. Enthusiasm without judgment can become indiscriminate. At their best, the two dispositions can correct and enrich one another.
My own place, however, is primarily on the side of wonder.
I do not want merely to evaluate a work of art. I want to encounter it. I want to understand what it is reaching toward. I want to let it surprise me, unsettle me, delight me, and perhaps transform me.
I am not an artistic critic.
I am an artistic enthusiast.
