The Critic as Artist

Gilbert explains in detail to Ernest the importance of having critics and how their work projects the artists’ work and by critiquing, the critic becomes an artist as well. This is vise versa, because an artist must critique other artists in order to embrace it and create their own art, so it is as if the artist and the critic are one.

Gilbert chooses to present the critics as an artist, because critics need to know what they are talking about. The critic needs to take art and show us the meaning of it. They need to think as artists and reveal something that is not obvious. People don’t learn and appreciate the art work without knowing the message the art portraits. This supports Gilbert’s theory: “The highest criticism, then, is more creative than creation, and the primary aim of the critic is to see the object as in itself it really is not, ” (Ernest, 907).

I agree with Gilbert’s projection of a critic, because Gilbert also mentions that it is much harder to talk than to act. He combines language as the parent and action as a child, because the parent knows language but the child only does action, because it doesn’t know language. I feel that I am a child, because I don’t know much about the arts in order to critique it, which is one of the key points Gilbert points out.