导读：石涛是出生于加拿大的艺术家，现在香港和北京居住工作。 2012年以来，石涛作为北京电影学院的客座教授，教授和指导新媒体艺术。石涛的艺术实践融合了他在业界的经验和学术研究。他在软件和互联网行业工作了近十年。在此之前，作为在加州理工学院和哈佛大学的研究员，石涛发展了计算机系统的新思路，并在世界上一些最有影响力的学术平台上发表作品。近日他发表了我们需要更多的批评家的文章引发关注。(作家：石涛，翻译：陈洁飞)

　　我们需要更多的批评家

　　上周末，我去看了一个在北京一家高档豪华购物中心的画廊举行的画展。去看这个画展是应一个在798开画廊的朋友的邀请，他提前告诉我“这些作品有可能会有点枯燥，有点传统”。在某种程度上，他说得对。然而，如果“传统”指的是对20世纪50年代的抽象表现主义的甜腻模仿的话，与其说这些作品枯燥和传统，不如说它们令人讨厌。

　　我脑海中浮现的问题是：为什么会发生这种情况——为什么一个坐落在首要地段的著名画廊最后却展出这么烂的作品?当我和开幕式上的其他客人讨论时，这个问题就出现在我脑海里。画展上很多人都衣着光鲜，但当我和他们聊起来时，我发现他们大多数都是房地产界的人士，而非艺术界的。甚至有些人是冲着买画回去装饰他们的房子而来的。

　　该画展介绍手册上的首句是，“中国哲学强调生命，而西方哲学则强调理性和知识”。这让我一下子警觉起来。当这么复杂丰富的东西被压碎、简化为一句显浅的俏皮话时，任何有学养的人都应该感到忧虑。然而，这句话的目的不在于(揭示)真相，而是营销——一种通过唤起读者的低层次欲望来预测并操控他们的沟通形式。这让我知道，这个艺术家的目标市场可能不是最有学养的人，也不是社会中最具批判性精神的那部分人。

　　收藏家需要批评家

　　这个画展上展出的东西(如果称得上是艺术的话)更像是装饰物件，它们是为了市场而精心制作的。把它们卖给那些物业经理，让他们拿去装饰大楼或酒店，倒是无伤大雅，也可以卖给那些外行的暴发户。“为什么这个作品的价值不如杰克逊·波洛克(美国画家)的作品?” 也许有人会问，“它看起来完全一样。” “对”，那个自封的艺术家回答说，“事实上，我使用了很多类似的泼墨技法”。物业经理们也许不会太在意它究竟是艺术品还是装饰品，但是暴发户们会。他们希望他们的投资会升值，同时也需要一些有文化意义的东西。装饰品会贬值，而有意义的艺术品会升值。数年之后，这个开幕式上的所有作品都会变成垃圾，而这个自封的艺术家将不复存在，而收藏家的钱在他手中摇身一变，被换成了香港、北京或者多伦多的公寓。

　　艺术家需要批评家

　　世界上最大的悲剧并非少数暴发户把他们的钱财浪费在次品上。真正的问题是这些钱跑到哪里去了。在一个理想的艺术界中，暴发户花钱，而伟大的作品和艺术家都深受其益。在北京，作品优秀且很有意思的艺术家，大有人在。他们是有思想有激情的人。这些艺术家也许不像这个开幕式上的人们那么善于社交或富于商业头脑，他们可以做出既有情感又有意义的作品。这意味着它有不朽的潜质——如果给他们一个机会的话。

　　约一个月前，我写了一篇关于艺术的价值的小文章。我的一个在加拿大温哥华一家艺术博物馆工作的朋友读了之后，给我发了这个评论：

　　“我认为，在一个作品的文化价值的创造过程中，一个有声望的二级渠道会对一个艺术家的实践的价值形成共识。单靠二级渠道的认可是不够的，但是一个艺术家的作品必须像以前一样，为圈内人所熟知，直到形成共识。部分的或不完整的共识将会随着时间的流逝而难以形成。——菲利普·迪翁，温哥华美术馆

　　艺术家要进行艺术创作，他们不能整天售卖他们的作品，他们也不能整天写东西评论它。艺术家需要画廊经营者来维持他们的社交和商业联系。同样地，艺术家需要批评家来解释他们的作品，并且将它们融入到创作背景之中。创作、售卖和解释是三项大相径庭的技能。精通其中一项尚且不易，更不用说三项了。每个人每天的时间只有这么多。批评家把艺术家解放出来，让后者能够专心于锤炼杰作。

　　批评是关于发现真理的论辩

　　让我们回到我去观看的画展吧。为了艺术界和更广泛意义上的文化，必须要有人站出来说——“这不是艺术品，这是装饰品”。这个人是谁?在哪里说?我可以写一篇尖刻的博文, 但我只是一个人。类似的画展每天都这个城市的购物中心开幕，甚至整个国家的购物中心。我们需要的不是某个人站出来批评这些作品——我们需要一个群体来做这件事。当批评家们与他人论辩的时候，就会做得最好。这是整个过程的重要一环。批评性的论辩是一个发现真理的辩证过程。

　　数周之前，我写了一篇批评电影节的文章。我指出大部分的电影节都是言过其实的旅游促销方案，并且让雄心勃勃的电影制作人产生虚假的幻想——以为它们能有助于他们事业的升迁。有几个人回复我说，我的观点太消极了，我展望应该更加积极。消极并非批评的目的，批评是为了发现真理。有时候它是积极的，有时候它是消极的。一个批评家必须锲而不舍地追求真理，那是他的本职工作。

　　回应批评家的方式是反驳他们的具体论证。 他们的论证有什么问题?他们的谬误和未经论证的理由之间的跳跃在哪里?这样做的话，个人就加入了批评家的群体并且把真理向前推进了。只要能够在论辩时切中要点，每个人都可以是批评家。发现真理并不是一个人的事，它是一个群体的过程。

　　我们需要更多的批评家。 我们会在哪里找到他们?

　　我把前文提到的画展中的照片发给我的一个朋友，他是北京电影学院的艺术教授。我问他，“谁会批评这些作品呢?批评家在哪里?” 他回答说，“他们在817。” 这是他的研究生研讨班的房间号码。他正在把这些学生训练成有实力的批评家，这是一件很棒的事，且我知道他们都训练有素。但我们需要他们毕业之后志在成为批评家。我们需要他们在艺术界中发声，而不是仅仅坐在研究生研讨班中与其他学生或教授讨论。

　　批评家们不能够孤军奋战。他们需要与其他批评家论辩，并形成一个走向真理的公共讨论。他们需要报刊和杂志这些基础设施来发表他们的批评。他们也需要公众能理解批评家的角色和重要性。

　　批评家对文化有重要意义

　　为什么我们需要这些人?为什么我们需要批评家?我们需要他们来帮助我们建立关于优劣高低的文化共识。我们不能闭门造车。不可能每一句说过的话都能成为惯用语。不可能每一部小说都能成为经典。我们需要精挑细选，找出这些作品：它们能够成为我们文化的一部分、能够成为我们共同的交流的一部分、成为我们的象征和指称体系的一部分和我们共同意识的一部分。

　　批评家让真正的艺术家获益。批评家叫那些粗制滥造的骗子和冒充者离开艺术圈，回到他们本应从事的行业——房地产销售。批评家们有助于引导收藏家。最重要的是，批评家帮助我们建立了一个真正伟大和适应性强的文化，在这种文化中，杰作和巨匠都能获得他们应有的认可和文化语境。

　　原文：

　　We need more critics

　　This past weekend I went to an exhibition opening at an art gallery in a high-end luxury Beijing shopping mall. I went invited by a friend who owns a gallery in 798. He warned me in advance “the work may be a little boring, a little traditional”. He was right in some ways. It turned out, however, to be more offensive than boring and traditional only in so far as a saccharine mimicry of 1950s abstract expressionism can be considered traditional.

　　The question in my mind was how did this happen — how did a well-known venue in a premier location end up showing such bad work? This question was on my mind as I spoke with other guests at the opening. There were lots of beautiful people there but as I spoke with them I discovered most were in real-estate, not the art world. Some were even at the opening to look at purchasing for display at their properties.

　　The exhibition’s introductory note began with the statement “Chinese philosophy emphasizes life whereas its western counterpart gives priority to reason and knowledge.” This set the alarm bells clanging in my head. Any educated person should feel apprehensive when so much complexity is smashed down to a facile one-liner. The purpose of this statement however was not the truth. The purpose was marketing — a form of communication that anticipates and manipulates the reader by appealing to their base desires. This suggested to me that the artist’s intended market is probably not the highest educated nor the most critical segment of society.

　　The collectors need critics

　　This stuff on display at the exhibition, if one can call it art, more like decorative pieces, is carefully manufactured with a market in mind. It’s made for sale to property managers as innocuous works for their buildings or hotels. It’s also made for sale to the nouveaux riche who won’t really know any better. “Why is this work not as valuable as Jackson Pollock”, one might ask, “it kind of looks the same”. “Yes,” the self-styled artist replies, “actually, I use many similar splattering techniques”. The property managers probably don’t really care if it’s art or decoration, but the nouveaux-riche do. They want an investment that will appreciate in value and they also want something that has cultural meaning. Decoration depreciates while meaningful art appreciates. A few years from now all the work at this opening will be in some trash bin and this self-styled artist will be long gone, having transformed the collectors’ money into apartments in Hong Kong, Beijing, or Toronto.

　　The artists need critics

　　A few nouveaux-riche wasting their money on bad paintings is probably not the biggest tragedy in the world. The real problem is where the money goes. In an ideal world nouveaux-riche spend their money and great art and real artists benefit. There are so many artists here in Beijing doing good and interesting work. These are people with ideas and passion. They take risks with their work. Like everybody, sure they want to make money and pay the bills, but they also make work with sincerity and meaning. These artists may not be as socially smooth or business savvy as the person on show at this opening, but they can make art with feeling and meaning. That means it has the potential to last — if it’s given a chance.

　　About a month ago I wrote a piece on the value of art. A friend of mine working at an art museum in Vancouver, Canada sent me this comment after reading it:

　　I believe something that happens in the creation of the cultural value of a work of art is that secondary channels of good repute create a consensus as to the value of an artist's practice. A single secondary channel's endorsement is not enough, but an artists work must make the rounds, as it were, until a consensus is created. A partial or incomplete consensus will fail over time. — Philip Dion, Vancouver Art Gallery

　　Artists need to make art. They can’t spend all day selling their work, and they can’t spend all day writing about it. Artists need gallerists to build and maintain their social and business connections. Similarly, artists need critics to explain and contextualize their work. Making art, selling it, and explaining it are three very different sets of skills. It’s so difficult to be very good at one thing, let alone three. People only have so much time in each day. Critics free artists to focus on making great work.

　　Criticism is about argument getting at the truth

　　Let us return to this exhibition I was at. For the sake of the art world and the broader culture, someone needs to step up and say — “this is not art, this is decoration”. Who is that person and where will it happen? I could write a scathing blog post, but I am just one person. Similar exhibitions are likely opening in malls across the city, and across the country. We don’t just need one person stepping up to criticize the work — we need a community of people doing so. Critics do their best work when they’re arguing with each other. That’s a crucial part of the process. Critical argument is a dialectical process for finding truth.

　　A few weeks ago, I wrote a post where I criticized film festivals. I claimed the vast majority of film festivals are overhyped tourism promotion schemes offering false hope of career advancement to aspiring filmmakers. Several people replied to me that I was being too negative, and I should have a more positive outlook. Being positive is not the purpose of criticism. The purpose of criticism is to get at the truth. Sometimes that’s positive, sometimes it’s negative. A critic must pursue this truth relentlessly. That’s her job.

　　The way to respond to a critic is to counter their specific arguments. What about their arguments is wrong, where are the fallacies or unjustified leaps of reason? By doing this, one joins the critical community and pushes the truth forward. Anyone can be a critic, so long as they’re arguing on the points. Reaching the truth is not the job of one person. It is a community process.

　　We need more critics. Where will we find them?

　　I sent a friend, a Professor in Fine Art at Beijing Film Academy, photos of the exhibition mentioned earlier. I asked him, “who is going to criticize this work? Where are the critics?” He replied, “They’re in 817.” This is the room number of his graduate student seminar. It’s wonderful that he’s training these students to be capable critics, and I know he has trained them well. But we need them to choose to be critics once they graduate. We need them out in the art world doing criticism and not just sitting in a graduate seminar talking with other students and professors.

　　Critics cannot work on their own. They need other critics to argue with and form a public discussion that drives at the truth. They need journal and magazine infrastructure to publish in. They also need public understanding of the role and importance of the critic.

　　Critics are crucial for culture

　　Why do we need these people? Why do we need critics? We need them to help us build cultural consensus around what’s good and what’s bad. We can’t keep everything with us. Not every sentence ever spoken can become an idiom. Not every novel can join our canon. We need to pick and choose which works become part of our culture, part of our shared communication, part of our shared systems of symbols and references, part of our shared consciousness.

　　Critics help the real artists. Critics tell the charlatans and pretenders making bad art to go off and pursue that postponed career selling real-estate. Critics help guide the collectors. Most importantly, critics help us build a truly great and resilient culture, one where great works and great artists gain the recognition and cultural context they deserve.

　　艺术家简介

　　石涛是出生于加拿大的艺术家，现在香港和北京居住工作。 2012年以来，石涛作为北京电影学院的客座教授，教授和指导新媒体艺术。石涛的艺术实践融合了他在业界的经验和学术研究。他在软件和互联网行业工作了近十年。他在微软和facebook工作期间所开发的应用代码，如今被世界各地数十亿人所使用。在此之前，作为在加州理工学院和哈佛大学的研究员，石涛发展了计算机系统的新思路，并在世界上一些最有影响力的学术平台上发表作品。石涛曾在康奈尔大学和哈佛大学学习计算机科学，并获得哈佛的博士学位。

　　以下是来自作品的三块不同的砖。“砖”后面的括号内的数字是其在画布上直角坐标系的数值。原点(0, 0)是在左上角，正y轴朝下，正x轴指向右侧。

　　下面显示的图像为有损压缩的JPEG文件，所以包含些许压缩痕迹，分辨率有限。分发给藏家的数字文件不是这些文件，而是无损压缩(BZIP2) TIF文件，每厘米分辨率为128像素。

　　一千、十亿、一万亿 —— 砖 (2, 8), 2015: 2.56 米 x 2.56 米

　　一千、十亿、一万亿 —— 砖 (22, 15), 2015: 2.56 米 x 2.56 米

　　一千、十亿、一万亿 —— 砖 (4, 19), 2015: 2.56 米 x 2.56 米

来源：墙报-人物