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 usage 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 creates art as an occupation.
- 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
Notes
- In Our Time: The Artist BBC Radio 4, TX 28th March 2002
- P.Galloni, Il sacro artefice. Mitologie degli artigiani
medievali, Laterza, Bari,
1998)
- [1]
References
- P.Galloni, Il sacro artefice. Mitologie degli artigiani
medievali, Laterza, Bari, 1998
- C. T. Onions (1991). The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.
Clarendon Press Oxford. ISBN 0-19-861126-9
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