I don't see why these need to be exclusive. A non-artist might have something valuable to say about art, and an artist might have nothing to say. Criticism and art are two completely different acts, and both have their place.fishybawb wrote:And to anyone criticising someone else's work - put up, or shut up.
Criticism often comes very cheap, so there's a lot of it, and a lot of it is bad. There's a lot of bad art, too (which might be why we need criticism ;P ) but at least the effort required to make it keeps the volume down.
I don't really see bad criticism as much of a problem. It doesn't carry much weight unless it's meaningful. If idle shitty criticism has the power to stop you from making art, you're not going to get very far as an artist. Maybe it's an annoyance, but making art requires dealing with far more frustration than meaningless chatter should be able to give you.