In his blog Griffin asked: Is it okay for a critic to try to correct ones interpretation of the art piece is dead wrong? Like a painting of a butterfly, if a person thinks that butterfly represents eternal torment from Hell, would a critic be allowed to say that the persons belief is wrong?
The world of critics and critiques is an extremely complicated one. We have this strange love-hate relationship with critics and their opinions. We are always damning them and believing they are wrong, judgmental, and picky but at the same time we are constantly feeding into and reading what they think and what their opinions are. We are willing to have them tell us whether a movie or book or CD was good or bad and based our purchases and choices on these opinions but how far does this go? Like Griffin asked, can they tell us whether our belief or interpretation of any form of art is correct? To this I would say no. No one can really tell us what lies in our hearts, as corny as that sounds. This is what, at least what I believe, makes humans different. We can have so many influences and interpretations from each other and who is to say those assumptions are wrong? Each piece of art work means something different to all of us because we all lead different lives and see the world through our own warped lenses. When I see a butterfly picture I might think of happiness and childhood and spring because that is what happened in my life in association with butterflies but my opinion is not the be all and end all opinions on butterfly pictures. Our twisted lenses prevent us from seeing anything neutrally. This goes for critics too. They have just the same biased subconscious as the rest of us, it is impossible not to. They conducted this study where they had something had a party and taped it and they asked a bunch of people what had happened. Each person told them a different story and each of their stories was not what happened. So, what is our obsession with pinning down things as good or bad when we all look through a different glass as we view the world?
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