An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to 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.
We define the noun as follows:
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1. A person who creates art. |
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2. A person who creates art as an occupation.
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3. A person who is skilled at some activity. |
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The Oxford English Dictionary defines the older broad meanings of the term "artist":
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- A learned person or Master of Arts
- One who pursues a practical science, traditionally medicine, astrology, alchemy,
chemistry
- A follower of a pursuit in which skill comes by study or practice
- A follower of a manual art, such as a mechanic
- One who makes their a fine art
- One who cultivates one of the traditionally the arts presided over
by the muses
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