THE BLOOD ON THE SAND

Criticism in art can be a help, an improvement or a stab in the heart of the artist. The artist can decide to accept criticism or not, but she has the right to choose who to listen to and who to not. Basically because usually she thinks that if she was alone to make decisions with the blank paper she must be it too at the end. There are critics who recommend things that completely distort the meaning of a work of art. Artist needs the final word to protect her work. When the artist is forced to modify her work, a phenomenon usually occurs, the artist's disengagement from her work and the search for other more comfortable areas where she can develop her activity.

This happens a lot when a board of directors in a company decides to modify a work seeking some kind of direct benefit. Or when a group of people who have power decide to impose their criteria on the artist. The artist disassociates herself from her work. It happened to MiguelAnguelo when somoene put underpants on his nudes from the Sistine Chapel. The work lost much of its strength and symbolic but at the end Miguel Angel was very well paid. 25 years after , when he could he maked his revenge. He never forgotten that. It is normal 5 years of work( and 1 more) put in question by the dirty opinion of a group of cardinals. But cardinals have the power.

Similar thing happened to Picasso when the young ladies of Avignon were not understood by anyone. Art is full of such situations. But Picasso do not changed one pixel.

This situation is especially serious when the art is a gift and the recipient of the gift uses the power over the work to do that. Imagine if Leonardo gives the Gioconda as a gift and someone decides to put pink glasses on the painture because its combines better with her kitchen, which is where she is going to hang the painting.

If the work is important. If the artist has put her heart there. The heart of the artist will bleed forever through the wound in the work. And once broken it can no longer be fixed. There is no way back. Once the love for your work is lost, it cannot be recovered. It is like love for a partner. To understand that you have to live it.

How many films have not been rejected by their directors because they have made them change the ending forcibly? There comes a time when they don't even mention it.

You may not be one of the geniuses I mentioned but have a heart and have it bleed through the fences in the sand. You will never love sand again but you will never forget it.