The definition of an
artist is wide-ranging and covers a broad spectrum of
activities to do with creating
art, practicing the
arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common useage in both everyday
speech and academic
discourse is a practitioner in the
visual arts only. The term is often used in the
entertainment business, especially in a business context, for musicians and other performers (less often for
actors). "Artiste" (the French for artist) is a variant used in English only in this context. Use of the term to describe writers, for example, is certainly valid, but less common, and mostly restricted to contexts like
criticism.
Dictionary definitions
Wiktionary defines the noun 'artist' (Singular: artist; Plural: artists) as follows:
- A person who creates art.
- A person who is skilled at some activity.
The
Oxford English Dictionary defines the older broad meanings of the term "artist,"
* A learned person or Master of Arts (now rather obsolete)
* One who pursues a practical science, traditionally medicine, astrology, alchemy, chemistry (also obsolete)
* A follower of a pursuit in which skill comes by study or practice - the opposite of a theorist
* A follower of a manual art, such as a mechanic - partly obsolete
* One who makes their
craft a fine art
* One who cultivates one of the
fine arts - traditionally the arts presided over by the
muses - now the dominant usage
A definition of Artist from Princeton.edu: creative person (a person whose creative work shows sensitivity and imagination).
History of the term
Although the Greek word "techně" is often mistranslated as "art," it actually implies mastery of any sort of craft. The Latin-derived form of the word is "tecnicus", from which the English words
technique,
technology,
technical are derived.
In Greek culture each of the nine
Muses oversaw a different field of human creation:
No muse was identified with the visual arts of painting and sculpture. In ancient Greece sculptors and painters were held in low regard, somewhere between freemen and slaves, their work regarded as mere manual labour.
The word art is derived from the Latin "ars", which, although literally defined means, "
skill method" or "technique", holds a connotation of
beauty.
During the Middle Ages the word
artist already existed in some countries such as
Italy, but the meaning was something resembling
craftsman, while the word
artesan was still unknown. An artist was someone able to do a work better than others, so the skilled excellency was underlined, rather than the activity field. In this period some "artisanal" products (such as textiles) were much more precious and expensive than paintings or sculptures.
The first division into major and minor arts dates back to
Leon Battista Alberti's works (
De re aedificatoria, De statua, De pictura), focusing the importance of intellectual skills of the artist rather than the manual skills (even if in other forms of art there was a
project behind).
With the
Academies in Europe (second half of XVI century) the gap between fine and applied arts was definitely set.
Many contemporary definitions of "artist" and "art" are highly contingent on
culture, resisting aesthetic prescription, in much the same way that the features constituting beauty and the beautiful, cannot be standardized easily without corruption into
kitsch.
The present day concept of an 'artist'
Artist is a descriptive term applied to a person who engages in an activity deemed to be an art. An artist also may be defined unofficially, as, "a person who expresses themselves through a medium". The word also is used in a qualitative sense of, a person
creative in,
innovative in, or adept at, an artistic practice.
Most often, the term describes those who create within a context of '
high culture', activities such as
drawing,
painting,
sculpture,
acting,
dancing,
writing,
filmmaking,
photography, and
music—people who use imagination, talent, or skill to create works that may be judged to have an
aesthetic value.
Art historians and
critics will define as artists, those who produce art within a recognized or recognizable discipline.
The term also is used to denote highly skilled people in non-"arts" activities, as well—crafts, law, medicine, alchemy, mechanics, mathematics, defense (martial arts), and architecture, for example. The designation is applied to high skill in illegal activities, such as "scam artist" (a person very adept at deceiving others, often profiting (semi-illegally) from other people) or "con artist" (a person very adept at committing fraud).
Often, discussions on the subject focus on the differences among "artist" and "
technician", "
entertainer" and "
artisan," "
fine art" and "
applied art," or what constitutes art and what does not. The
French word
artiste (which in French, simply means "artist") has been imported into the
English language where it means a performer (frequently in
Music Hall or
Vaudeville). Use of the word "artiste" can also be a pejorative term.
The English word 'artist' has thus, a narrower range of meanings than the word 'artiste' in French.
Examples of art and artists
See also
