Critics are shaky cartographers, experimental scientists, evangelical missionaries and psychoanalysts of the artistic id. We forge a map of our tastes — roads in the cultural landscape and through our own dark aesthetic woods. We make leaps of faith, hypothesizing an artist’s meaning in a remarkably limited context. We swagger up to the craps table and play with the thrill of risk flushing our faces. Occasionally, we are blessed with a work that’s undeniably a classic; bless that rare visitation from the heavens above.