The Beginning
Every time I begin to write about the visions I have had, or had been having regarding an ancient tradition present in various cultures & era, a naturally evolving enterprise… Something unexplainable pulls me back… and or attempts to change the courses of my thought processes; as if the dark & imperceptible laws of physics, biology, chemistry, & cosmology were expertly instructed to create such illusive obstacles.
Please acknowledge that the visions did not come to me in my dreams or in a form of revelation tablets; nor did it come from any trespassers… this may be, in my understandings, the concurrent results of the constant unrest and unfairness (both due to finite variables) in the totality of the human conscience.
Messages do have their ways to reach their designated mediums.
From the dawn of the earliest civilizations to today’s age of Technological wonders many naïve and chance seeking souls have evolved, and is still evolving in big numbers to a specific community of human race, called the “Artists.” A simple survey based on the available social networks would surely enforce this fact with fullest statistical support.
On the contrary, before we could go forward with our visions and claims, it is extremely important for us to identify, comprehend, and acknowledge the aura of an artist, and how we define it in general languages and through cultural connotations throughout history, in different civilizations.
A simple definition of Artist from Princeton.edu: creative person (a person whose creative work shows sensitivity and imagination).
“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.” (Wiki)
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the older broad meanings of the term "artist," as –
- 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
Artists, thence, could be envisioned as the inventors-designers-educationists-developers-philosophers-entertainers-leaders of the worldly variables, and themselves are the mediums of the art seen unseen – in other words, inspired.
Question remains if artists are so easily considered inspired, are all artists inspired?
If we delve in to the history of the term artist, perhaps we would be able to connect a few dots there. 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.
The word art is derived from the Latin "ars", which, although literally defined means, "skill method" or "technique", holds a connotation of beauty.
In Greek culture each of the nine Muses oversaw a different field of human creation:
- Calliope (the 'beautiful of speech'): chief of the muses and muse of epic or heroic poetry
- Clio (the 'glorious one'): muse of history
- Erato (the 'amorous one'): muse of love or erotic poetry, lyrics, and marriage songs
- Euterpe (the 'well-pleasing'): muse of music and lyric poetry
- Melpomene (the 'chanting one'): muse of tragedy
- Polyhymnia or Polymnia (the '[singer] of many hymns'): muse of sacred song, oratory, lyric, singing and rhetoric
- Terpsichore (the '[one who] delights in dance'): muse of choral song and dance
- Thalia (the 'blossoming one'): muse of comedy and bucolic poetry
- Urania (the 'celestial one'): muse of astronomy
It is noticeable that no muse was identified with the visual arts of painting and sculpture. In a Radio BBC 4 show: In Our Time: The Artist, on March 28th 2002, it was mentioned that in ancient Greece sculptors and painters were held in low regard, somewhere between freemen and slaves, their work regarded as mere manual labor. On the contrary, we might assert that since poet-singer-musicians were affiliated with the Muses, thus, were probably considered a higher mass. We’ll hunt for evidence for this claim throughout our research.
The word artist already existed in some nations such as Italy during the middle Ages. Conversely, the meaning was something resembling craftsman, while the word artesan was still unknown. An artist was considered to be someone capable of doing a work noticeably better than others, so that the skilled excellence was underlined, rather than the activity field – or profession. In this period some "artisanal" products (such as textiles) were much more precious and expensive than paintings or sculptures.
P Galloni, in “Il sacro artefice. Mitologie degli artigiani medievali,” Laterza, Bari, 1998, proclaimed that 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.
“Many fashionable and modern 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 tastelessness.” (Wiki)
So then what would be a simple present day concept of an artist, even though it might be undoubtedly corrupted?
According to the Wikipedia writers, “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.”
A hierarchical consensus of the term most often describes those who create within a context of the fine arts or 'high culture', activities such as drawing, painting, sculpture, acting, dancing, writing, filmmaking, photography, and music. Artists use imaginations, inspirations from the unseen; they use talents, or skills to create works that may be judged to have an aesthetic value.
Art historians and critics define artists as those who produce art within a recognized or recognizable discipline, which pretty much means one could go to an authorized academy, complete the disciplined courses - graduate and become a Master of Arts. Contrasting terms for highly-skilled workers in media in the applied arts or decorative arts include artisan, craftsman, and specialized terms such as potter, goldsmith or glassblower. In other words, if you are a holder of a fine certificate that says that you are a Master of Arts, graduated from some authoritative University, you are promptly qualified as a better and efficient artist, hence well-paid, even though the average Joe handyman may be able to do your works ten thousand times better, finer, and faster. Evidently, the only object that unfairly differentiates the artists from the handyman is that priceless certificate, a piece of paper with a huge burden of socio-cultural disease of manipulation.
Fine arts artists such as painters succeeded in the Renaissance in raising their status, formerly similar to these workers, to a decisively higher level, but in the 20th century the distinction became rather less relevant. In today’s world, through the apparent & constant influence of the private media, it is very arguably portrayed, perhaps for identifiable commercial reasons, that an artist (preferably a musician, singer, dancer, comedian, or entertainer) is a star of a Glamorous World, a Dev or Diva, an Avatar, a Role Model. Depending on his or her personal & professional life’s graphs of achievements… success, against failures & scandals – one is considered either a superstar or a dwarf star. Have you noticed a rise of TV shows such as “American Idols”…?
Do not forget that we initiated this conversation by focusing on a simple concept, “If artists are inspired, are all artists inspired?” As far as I am concerned so far we have simply stated and briefly discussed on a few generally accepted definitions of the word artist(s), predominantly in the Euro-Western cultures. So then, what about the Indo-Chinese culture, Russian, African, and Australian Aboriginal culture…what about the Islamic culture? And don’t forget the history!
In the next chapters we shall try to provide some historical facts as it is, and identify the artists’ in different times and their roles in shaping history.
