I've yet to understand why in every other industry it's almost standard practice to reward people for their skills and talents and whenever they do something especially good as a motivational technique, yet in the art world it's viewed as one of the worse things anyone could ever do. Artists need egos too. Not big over inflated egos, or course, but some sense of pride and self worth. In an industry that seems to dedicate itself to always pointing out the negative and never the positive, I see that as psychologically damaging and immensely disappointing.
I will never accept the premise that no positive feedback is the only way to go for all artists to improve. Just like I don't accept the premise that all people accept the same religions, beliefs, views, and opinions. It's just so narrow and close minded to me to think negativity is the only acceptable criticism for artists.
You get positive feedback from your audience- the people who either pay you for your work, or that you're sharing your work with for their entertainment. They're the ones you get rewarded from, and your reward is making them entertained. That's kind of what you get out of being an artist.
Critics are not your audience. They're your peers. You're not delivering them a product, they're assisting you in improving your product. They're on your team. Even if they tell you that your work is crap (usually they will also tell you WHY), it's to point you in the direction of improving.
Positive feedback is basically a praise, not a critique. And considering the ratio of praises/critiques, I guess an artist can take sometimes some blows without flinching. Again, only "artists" complain about critiques, not the artists.
It's very naive to believe that an artist should force his audience to percieve what he wants to them to see, and force them to praise him for whatever he does.
No one is asking anyone to "force" anything. You shouldn't have to force yourself to tell what you like about a given work of art. If you do, then you're doing something wrong, cuz that should be a natural thing.
Sta.sh
I will never accept the premise that no positive feedback is the only way to go for all artists to improve. Just like I don't accept the premise that all people accept the same religions, beliefs, views, and opinions. It's just so narrow and close minded to me to think negativity is the only acceptable criticism for artists.
In my opinion, of course.
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