The word artist originates from the word “artiste,” which means “one who cultivates one of the fine arts” (Online Etymology Dictionary). In the 21st century, an artist can be someone who creates pieces that are tangible like sculptures and paintings, or intangible like music and dance but hasn’t necessarily gone through formal training. There is one “copy” of the piece and the piece itself is unique; this goes back to the definition of art versus artifact. The piece created expresses emotions and ideas just as the pieces in the past. Artists especially now, are the people who experiment with different mediums and try different techniques. I truly don’t feel that a person should have to go through formal training to be considered an artist. There shouldn’t even be a distinction between an artist and an artisan. People who haven’t gone through such training create some of the most interesting and genuine pieces because other artists that they might have studied like Dali or Mozart aren’t influencing them. The works they produce are more likely to be their own creation. At the end of the day, someone who creates a work of art should be considered an artist, regardless of his or her formal education status.
Resources for online research
- Alvin Ailey
- Art History Resources on the Web
- Classical Music Link
- Culture NOW
- Image Collections and Online Art
- Met Museum online resources
- Metropolitan Opera
- New York Times – Arts
- SmART History
- The WWW Virtual Library: History of Art
- Thirteen – Sunday Arts
- UC Berkeley – Art History Resources
- Voices of the Shuttle
- WNYC – Arts and Ideas
The question to ask is what are artists studying. Is it a technique? A pianist will not be able to preform without a technical training of 15 years or more, a Dancer must go through the same harsh training. Or is it the philosophy and meaning of their society and culture? Could one become an artist without the ability of synthesizing his/her knowledge and feelings into a poem or a sculpture?
Is it enough to have a different outlook on life to become an artist? What is your ability to express it is limited? Would you then be a primitive artist? And cabinet maker is he too an artist?
There is nothing wrong with an artist receiving technical training. In fact, I think that the technical skills help fine tune the piece. It also helps them to learn about the meaning of their society and culture because then the pieces are more relevant. As long as they are not focusing on just other artists’ work, it’s fine to receive some training. Then again there are some self-taught musicians and dancers and they have techniques of their own. Their works are different than what’s out there because they were able to come up with them without others’ influences.
It’s important that artists have a different outlook on life. They do need to have more than a different outlook to become and artist but if they don’t then the pieces that all they all create will be similar. The viewers, or at least I, are more drawn to pieces that take a regular situation or object and paint it in a different way.
I definitely consider a cabinet maker an artist. The cabinet that he is creating is handmade. It is not the same as a cabinet that is mass produced by machines. The cabinet maker has a more artist approach to his piece than a machine.
The cabinet maker is called an artisan, not an artist. An artist is not concerned with the quality and functionality of the object, but in the universal concepts that could be expressed using different techniques (of which one could be the skill of wood work).
Therefore, it is not the schooling that is the essential component in the birth of an artist, but the sensibilities and the intent, that mark the individual.
Does this make it clear?