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An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage in everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only.
However, the term is also often used in the show business to refer to , , Singing, and other performers, in which they are known as Artiste instead. The French language word Artiste is a rare variant used in English language in this context. The use of the term "artist" to describe is valid, but less common, and mostly restricted to contexts such as critics' reviews; "author" is generally used instead.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines the word as:
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, the work often performed by slaves and mostly regarded as mere manual labour. In Our Time: The Artist BBC Radio 4, TX 28 March 2002
The word art derives from the Latin "ars" (stem art-), which, although literally defined means "skill method" or "technique", also conveys 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 artisan 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 at least to the works of Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472): De re aedificatoria, De statua, De pictura, which focused on the importance of the intellectual skills of the artist rather than the manual skills (even if in other forms of art there was a project behind). P.Galloni, Il sacro artefice. Mitologie degli artigiani medievali, Laterza, Bari, 1998
With the Academy in Europe (second half of 16th 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 the same way, the features constituting beauty and the beautiful cannot be standardized easily without moving into kitsch.
The main source of skill for both craft artists and fine artists is long-term repetition and practice. Many fine artists have studied their art form at university, and some have a master's degree in fine arts. Artists may also study on their own or receive on-the-job training from an experienced artist.
The number of available jobs as an artist is increasing more slowly than in other fields. About half of United States artists are self-employed. Others work in a variety of industries. For example, a pottery manufacturer will employ craft artists, and book publishers will hire illustrators.
In the US, fine artists have a median income of approximately US$50,000 per year, and craft artists have a median income of approximately US$33,000 per year. This compares to US$61,000 for all art-related fields, including related jobs such as , multimedia artists, , and fashion designers. Many artists work Part-time job as artists and hold a second job.
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