The difference between criticism and bashing

By Noel Galon de Leon

The first responsibility of anyone who encounters a work of art is not to judge it but to look at it long enough for it to begin speaking in its own language. Every artwork arrives carrying its own history of decisions—what to reveal, what to conceal, what to distort, what to remember, and what to leave unresolved. These decisions are rarely accidental. They are the result of years of practice, failures invisible to the public, countless revisions, and a commitment to seeing the world differently from the rest of us. This is why I continue to believe that we owe our artists something increasingly rare in the age of instantaneous opinion: trust. Not unquestioning admiration, certainly, nor immunity from disagreement, but the confidence that they know why they have made the choices they have made. Before we ask whether we like a work of art, we must first ask whether we have looked at it carefully enough to understand the questions it is asking.

That trust, however, should never be mistaken for silence. An art community that celebrates without questioning eventually loses its capacity for self-renewal. Every culture that has endured has done so because it learned to examine itself critically. The history of art is not merely a history of masterpieces; it is equally a history of arguments. Every important artistic movement—from Impressionism to Conceptual Art, from abstraction to social realism—was shaped not only by artists but also by critics, historians, curators, and audiences willing to dispute inherited ways of seeing. Art advances because ideas collide. Consensus has never been the engine of cultural progress.

Yet in our present moment, particularly within the architecture of social media, we have become strangely suspicious of disagreement itself. We increasingly mistake criticism for hostility, while genuine hostility often disguises itself as honesty. The language has become dangerously imprecise. To disagree is interpreted as an attack; to question is mistaken for disrespect; to analyze is dismissed as negativity. Meanwhile, the most reckless forms of public ridicule are casually defended as merely “telling the truth.” When these distinctions disappear, public conversation becomes impoverished. What remains is no longer criticism but performance—an endless competition for attention in which outrage receives greater reward than understanding.

This confusion is especially consequential within Iloilo’s visual arts community because ours remains a remarkably intimate cultural ecosystem. Artists know one another. Photographers document the same exhibitions. Writers, educators, collectors, organizers, and cultural workers often occupy overlapping circles of friendship and collaboration. Such proximity is both our strength and our vulnerability. It allows solidarity to flourish, but it also makes every disagreement feel intensely personal. The temptation, therefore, is to confuse criticism of an artwork with criticism of the artist, as though aesthetic evaluation were an assault upon character. It is not.

Criticism and bashing are separated by far more than tone; they are separated by purpose.

Criticism begins with the artwork because it understands that works of art exist independently of the personalities who created them. It asks how meaning is produced through form, material, context, symbolism, history, and audience. It attempts to interpret before it evaluates. It supports its claims with evidence rather than volume. Above all, criticism assumes that every judgment carries an obligation to explain itself. A critic earns authority not by certainty but by the quality of their attention.

Bashing, by contrast, is indifferent to understanding. It seeks not illumination but humiliation. It replaces analysis with accusation and substitutes the artist’s personality for the artwork itself. Where criticism enlarges public conversation, bashing narrows it into spectacle. It thrives on simplification because simplification is more easily consumed than complexity. Social media, with its appetite for immediacy and outrage, has become the perfect environment for this confusion. Algorithms reward certainty before thoughtfulness, reaction before reflection, and virality before understanding. The result is a public sphere in which the loudest voice is too often mistaken for the most insightful one.

The tragedy is that this confusion ultimately harms everyone. Artists begin to interpret every difficult question as hostility. Critics become hesitant to write honestly for fear of being labeled destructive. Audiences lose the opportunity to learn how artworks actually generate meaning. An exhibition becomes merely something to admire or condemn rather than an invitation to think. The conversation surrounding art becomes increasingly emotional while becoming progressively less intellectual.

If we genuinely wish to strengthen the visual arts community of Iloilo, then perhaps we must redirect our attention toward a more fundamental set of questions.

Our principal concern should not be whether critics have written unfavorable reviews. Nor should it be whether photographers captured exhibitions from the “right” angle, or whether artists are receiving sufficient praise online. These are secondary concerns. The more pressing questions belong elsewhere.

We should instead be asking what responsibilities our cultural institutions have assumed—and, perhaps more importantly, what responsibilities they have quietly abandoned.

What kinds of audiences are our exhibition organizers attempting to cultivate? If exhibitions aspire to be public cultural spaces rather than private social gatherings, how are viewers being taught to engage with what they encounter? Where are the curatorial essays that situate works within larger conversations? Where are the exhibition texts that encourage interpretation instead of merely providing information? Where are the gallery talks, artist conversations, public forums, and educational programs that transform spectators into readers of visual culture? If curators are present—and they should be—their role extends far beyond arranging objects within a room. Curators construct contexts. They mediate between artist and audience. They cultivate habits of looking. They shape the ethical and intellectual conditions under which art acquires public meaning.

Equally important are the ethical questions that accompany every exhibition but are too often left unspoken. How are artworks documented? How are photographers credited? How are collaborative practices acknowledged? How are issues of authorship, attribution, accessibility, and representation negotiated? These are not administrative details. They are cultural questions because they determine what kind of artistic community we are becoming.

A mature art community is measured not simply by the number of exhibitions it mounts or the awards its artists receive. It is measured by the seriousness of the conversations it can sustain. It is measured by whether disagreement deepens understanding rather than destroys relationships. It is measured by whether criticism is welcomed as an indispensable form of public education instead of feared as an act of personal betrayal.

Perhaps this is the conversation we have postponed for too long.

The future of Iloilo’s visual arts community will not be secured by endless affirmation, nor by perpetual outrage. It will depend upon whether we can cultivate something considerably more demanding: a culture of intellectual generosity, ethical accountability, and critical literacy. Artists deserve audiences willing to look more carefully. Critics deserve the freedom to write honestly without being caricatured as adversaries. Audiences deserve institutions committed not only to exhibiting art but to teaching people how to see.

In the end, critics are not the enemies of artists. Artists are not the enemies of critics. Photographers are not the enemies of either. The true adversary is a culture that mistakes noise for discourse, certainty for knowledge, and public humiliation for public criticism.

If Iloilo’s artistic community hopes to mature, then we must begin with a simple but transformative act of cultural discipline: learning the difference between criticism and bashing.

Because only one of them enlarges the life of art.

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Noel Galon de Leon is a writer and professor at the University of the Philippines Visayas, where he teaches in the Division of Professional Education and at UP High School in Iloilo. He is also the Secretary of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts-National Committee on Literary Arts.