Artists

The term artist can be applied to any of the following people.

  • A learned person or Master of Arts
  • One who persues a practical science, traditionally medicine, astrology, alchemy, chemistry.
  • 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
  • one who makes their craft a fine art.
  • one who cultivates one of the fine arts - traditionally the arts presided over by the muses

referenced from:c.t.onions (1991). The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Clarendon Press Oxford. ISBN 0-19-861126-9.


The exact meaning of the term artist varies within different disciplines. Within the Visual Arts, an artist is someone whose practice involves one or more of the traditional forms of visual art or who develops a new form.

Traditional forms include: Painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, dance and drama.
Newer forms include: video, film, fashion, textiles, jewellery, graffiti, new media, and conceptual art. The term visual artist is becoming the preffered term for artists working within the visual arts.


There is some debate concerning who has the ability to confer the status of artist. Among art history Artists are those with recognised provenance. Among visual artists it is widely accepted that the title 'Artist' can be self conferred by anyone who chooses to do so. this is seen as a way of adding possibility to the form one is working within. from this position an artist could be said to be someone who employs creative talent to produce works of art.

other disciplines associate different criterea with artists practising in those feilds. for example in the feild of music an artist can refer to a performer at a given performance or an outstanding musician. In the theatre the term artist can refer to a particularly noteworthy person whereas a performer is called an artiste.

The daily work of a Visual artist involves many considerations. two major considerations within a work are form (materials, structure and physicality of the work) and content (context, meaning, message and narrative within the work). In addition to this a visual artist will also consider such things as; funding, audience, exhibiting, copyright law, as well a a host of other issues that place them alongside their contemporaries.

This information is based on the article Artist from the free encyclopedia Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. On Wikipedia is a list of authors available.