Fucking Critics

While reading a section of James Elkin's "Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?" I was struck by one of the main points he tries to make in the chapter called "The Evidence of Excess." While he is specifically speaking of art history, I found that it applies to almost anything. He postulates that the amount of time, energy, and the exponential increase in the number of words needed to criticize a piece of artwork has, in effect, begun to overtake the amount of works produced, and that there is more being said about something than that something may necessarily have to say.

While that probably doesn't sound interesting to anyone besides myself, it does raise some interesting questions if one is to think more thoroughly about it. First, when did it become more important to criticize than to create, and why is this so widely accepted, and indeed lauded? Could the energy placed into the assessment of something, whether it be a painting, a sculpture, a comic book, or a piece of prose, be better used to actually create a piece of art? Is it true that "those who do, do, those who can't, teach and those that cannot teach, criticize?" Or is the act of judgment merely a tool to better understand, and therefore enrich, the experience? Is dissection useful to improve one's own abilities, or is it an act that does little more than waste one's time?

Being in school I have found that the notion of "critical thinking" that is pounded into student's heads is mostly a positive idea, one that fosters the ability to question things and "read between the lines." But is there a limit to this? Does all of this critical thinking lead to an inability to create? Does the act of evaluation ruin any desire one may have to make something for fear that it will be exposed to too many attempts to disembowel it, to pull it so completely apart that the sum of the parts is no longer visible? Why would anyone even try when it will be dismissed if it is not flawless, and argued about regardless?

It makes me question a large number of things. Is my being in school killing my ability to write? Does the non-stop exposure and immersion within an institution that relies only upon criticism as a means of legitimacy destroy my ability to think and create to my own accord?

Is this blog part of the problem?