These are excerpts from the author’s book “Deep,” which contains eight of his small books published in the form of Wisdom Literature covering different aspects of life: Facing troublemakers, dealing with pain, personal financial issues, gastronomy, reading, criticizing, inspiring, and feeling always good to go.

Series 6: Criticizing.

Criticizing Arts

• The saying “everything is relative” generally does not apply to a subject as much as it applies to the arts and criticism of it. But this should not excite you to rush to judge any work of art unless you have contemplated it deeply and it has clearly affected you.

• Art, like any other aspect of life, is affected by time and place. Try, as much as possible, to contemplate the artwork with the inspiration of your artistic culture and various knowledge, without prior restrictions, so that your judgment of that work is not subject to the absolute influence of a single trend or tendency of any kind.

• One of the most special challenges of art criticism is that which the artists themselves face while engaged in the creation of their artistic works. The creator often faces an indirect (and sometimes almost a direct) self-criticism about the work they are creating. There is nothing wrong with that, provided it does not hinder the creator and make them hesitate before each step on the way to the completion of the artwork.

• Before being an academic task or a professional work, art criticism requires a genuine talent and a sense of openness to all critical experiences in the arts and other aspects of life.

• The creator’s criticism of another creator’s artwork in the same field is often distinguished, but it does not have an absolute privilege over all critical approaches by others to that artwork.

• Criticism of a creative artwork by a simple person may involve a view that goes beyond what is typically offered by many professionals.

• No criticism is not based on references or prior rules, to one degree or another. But in order to get rid of the influence of references and preconceived rules as much as you can, in art criticism in particular, try to approach each creative work as if you were setting its own critical rules and references.

• Art criticism, in particular, loses a lot of its luster if it does not include—at least to some degree—an artistic, creative value that is parallel to the artistic work that is the subject of criticism.

• Artistic creations that are out of the ordinary are undoubtedly the result of lofty and daring artistic criticism, even if the artist did not express that criticism directly and was satisfied with creativity outside the familiar, as a practical embodiment of that criticism.

• You reach one of the loftiest goals of art criticism when it inspires you about the art of criticism.