To make another thing clear: not only artists, but also editorial readers, critics, competition jurors etc. can be very incompetent and arrogant in their roles, even if working for a prestigious institution for a good salary.

Long ago I read about someone who had copied passages from extremely successful and highly acclaimed recent novels, changed some names, and sent each to the original publisher, pretending it to be an excerpt from his own new novel. None of the addressees recognized their own publications, and all were quite definite in their negative verdict. (Chinese politeness is rarely deemed necessary nowadays, unless the aspiring artist is a prominent politician or similar.)