What do you have to do to earn the right to call yourself an artist?

MIlo here; I found the title acceptable after both the Met and the Louvre had a bidding war for one of my paintings at Sotherby’s three years ago.

Spending a lot of time and effort on it. When you are absorbed and passionate about what you do and you can actually do it well.

You don’t. Any more than a person can decide to call himself an intellectual. Both terms (artist, intellectual) are terms that are given to a person BY OTHERS as a representation of their evaluation of the person’s skills. Anything else – like me calling myself an artist – is hubris.

I may be a portrait painter, but that does not make me an artist. I may like piecing together mosaics, but that does not make me an artist. It makes me a technician who would like to be recognized for my creativity.

Let the flames begin.

I am sympathetic to this idea, @elbanditoroso, but I have heard people get very passionate about this discussion in many ways.

It’s quite easy, actually. Just put a bird on it.

@wundayatta , no doubt. Because peoples’ self-images are what they WANT to be, not necessarily what they are. Most people are not honest about themselves. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the person isn’t blinded to reality.

Where the real problems come is when someone sees themselves as the next Da Vinci, and the rest of the world sees them as the next trash collector. That’s when the wannabe artists lose control.

Suffer?

I’m with @Keep_on_running on this one. I believe it has something to do with the passion and worship an individual puts into their art.

I’m an actor. I’ve been on stage for 42 years. Albeit the vast majority of that has not been paid, I have worked hard at honing my skills, and I have been praised by some locally prestigious people. Still, I have no illusions about how far I can take my abilities.

I have several friends who are professionals in theater, and all of them tell me to remain in the circles I’m in. They tell me that I have a fire for the art form that they and others have lost in the race to gain something else like money at the art.

I do believe it’s possible for professionals in art to retain their passion. I’m merely pointing out that it’s also possible for them to become jaded.

If you can build a $5 foot-long at Subway™ then you can be called a sandwich artist. I guess by that standard I can start calling myself a salad artist. So I will.

Possibly by the size of the audience?

Of course, being a cop is an art in itself.

Being a young drummer in a rock and roll band was one high light of my life. I knew I was an artist, in my own accord, at the age of 14, when I was asked to be a sessions drummer in a recording studio. Not many people can say this at this early an age.

I have been blessed.

I know with writers and photographers, once you get paid to do your art, you are considered a professional.

There is often little difference between a crafter and an artist. I consider myself a crafter, but what I produce is art. In order to call my work “Native American” I am a registered member of a government recognized tribe.

My impression is that anyone who thinks he/she is an artist call him or herself an artist. I think I am NOT an artist because my mother was one. I got some of her talent, but none of her genius, and that to me is the difference. @gailcalled You have impeccable credentials, and there is a difference, but some little old lady Sunday painters think of themselves as artists. To them that makes it so. It doesn’t to me.

I think art is anything you create that brings pleasure to people. I’m a writer, and also a developer of a home-grown online sex-club game. Does that make me an artist? Dunno. But I hear from many people who enjoy my stories and my game.

…earn the right to call yourself an artist?

Your death….

You cannot “earn it” but only “be” it. And being it is not a function of striving and ambition. Perhaps one never knows that one has achieved what they have set out to do. The importtant thing is the urge to create and the passion that motivates you to overcome your fears. Artists create because that is what they must do.

I love these quotes on creating art from J.Krishnamurti:

A true artist is beyond the vanity of the self and its ambitions. To have the power of brilliant expression, and yet be caught in worldly ways, makes for a life of contradiction and strife. Praise and adulation, when taken to heart, inflate the ego and destroy receptivity, and the worship of success in any field is obviously detrimental to intelligence. Any tendency or talent which makes for isolation, any form of self-identification, however stimulating, distorts the expression of sensitivity and brings about insensitivity. Sensitivity is dulled when gift becomes personal, when importance is given to the “me” and the “mine” – I paint, I write, I invent. It is only when we are aware of every movement of our own thought and feeling in our relationship with people, with things and with nature, that the mind is open, pliable, not tethered to self-protective demands and pursuits; and only then is there sensitivity to the ugly and the beautiful, unhindered by the self.

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To sing we must have a song in our hearts

Learning a technique may provide us with a job, but it will not make us creative; whereas, if there is joy, if there is the creative fire, it will find a way to express itself, one need not study a method of expression. When one really wants to write a poem, one writes it, and if one has the technique, so much the better; but why stress what is but a means of communication if one has nothing to say? When there is love in our hearts, we do not search for a way of putting words together. Great artists and great writers may be creators, but we are not, we are mere spectators. We read vast numbers of books, listen to magnificent music, look at works of art, but we never directly experience the sublime; our experience is always through a poem, through a picture, through the personality of a saint. To sing we must have a song in our hearts; but having lost the song, we pursue the singer. Without an intermediary we feel lost; but we must be lost before we can discover anything. Discovery is the beginning of creativeness; and without creativeness, do what we may, there can be no peace or happiness for man.

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One can be creative without having any particular talent

The freedom to create comes with self-knowledge; but self-knowledge is not a gift. One can be creative without having any particular talent. Creativeness is a state of being in which the conflicts and sorrows of the self are absent, a state in which the mind is not caught up in the demands and pursuits of desire. To be creative is not merely to produce poems, or statues, or children; it is to be in that state in which truth can come into being. Truth comes into being when there is a complete cessation of thought; and thought ceases only when the self is absent, when the mind has ceased to create, that is, when it is no longer caught in its own pursuits. When the mind is utterly still without being forced or trained into quiescence, when it is silent because the self is inactive, then there is creation.

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Art divorced from life has no great significance

Art divorced from life has no great significance. When art is separate from our daily living, when there is a gap between our instinctual life and our efforts on canvas, in marble or in words, then art becomes merely an expression of our superficial desire to escape from the reality of what is. To bridge this gap is very arduous, especially for those who are gifted and technically proficient; but it is only when the gap is bridged that our life becomes integrated and art an integral expression of ourselves.

J.Krishnamurti, From EDUCATION AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE

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You may be a potential writer, or a poet. or a painter. Whatever it is, if you really love to do it, you are not ambitious, because in love there is no ambition.

The main difference between arts and crafts are that crafts are functional and art gives you aesthetic enjoyment. There can be overlap, but there isn’t always. If I knit you a scarf that keeps you warm, that’s a craft. The Charleston sweetgrass baskets are an example of the overlap between arts and crafts, beautiful and functional. A painting is art, but not a craft.

My personal threshold is that if you work on art every day (or nearly), you’re an artist, whatever the medium. By that standard, I’m not an artist; it’s just a hobby.

When you’re passionate bout your art and it comes from you.

I don’t think you can do anything to earn the right to call yourself an artist. Only other people can call you an artist. What you think of yourself doesn’t matter. If you want to be thought of as an artist, then others must think of you that way.

There’s only one real way that you can know if others think of you as an artist. They have to be willing to part with something valuable in order to acquire your work. Typically that means they have to pay you. If they aren’t willing to part with anything valuable, then all the kind words they say mean nothing. They don’t really think your work has artistic merit—at least, not enough to make it worth their while to acquire it.

If you give your “work” away for free, then you’re not an artist. There is no shame in this. Practicing an art is healthy. But the best you can say is you are a student of the art. You can not lay claim to talent unless people are willing to make a sacrifice to be exposed to your work.

It shouldn’t matter whether you can call yourself an artist or not. In fact, no one should call themselves an artist. That is a job for other people. It really should be no concern, except, of course, that we want validation for our work. Because most of us do work for others; to please others, and we need to know if they are pleased.

The problem is that it is easy for people to say they are pleased when it is free to say that. When it costs money, then you can tell if they really are pleased or not.

It is a dream of mine to actually be paid for my creative work. If would be nice to feel that my work is truly valuable to people. But I’ve never been paid for it—at least never more than a token, here and there—mostly as a musician and once as a dancer and twice as a writer, and never more than $150 or so. Mostly less than $50.

But it doesn’t matter, I tell myself. It has health benefits. Just the creative process. Makes me feel better. I don’t know if I do it because I have to. I do it because I want to. It’s important to me. It makes me feel good. It calms me. It lifts my spirits. It’s a way of connecting to others. But artist, I am not, although I would love to be one.

I think your definition is needlessly restrictive.

One of my cousins has produced great art: sketches, paintings, sculpture and even “found art” (discarded trash that she saw and turned into real art). But she does that because she likes to do it. She gives it away. She’s still an artist.

No one is going to check the tax returns for the Lascaux cave painter to decide: “This person was an artist!”

Artists are people who make art. Period.

@CWOTUS The question is how do you know what a person makes is art? I’m saying that it’s not art unless other people are willing to sacrifice to acquire it.

@wundayatta You’re being silly.

If they aren’t willing to part with anything valuable, then all the kind words they say mean nothing. Words mean nothing? Are you serious? That’s possibly the silliest thing I’ve seen today, but it’s still early where I am.

I have performed before people who literally could not afford to part with the widow’s mite. They were some of the most appreciative people I’ve ever met, and their praise was heartfelt and genuine. And it meant to world to me.

The original post asks us about being an artist. It asks specifically about self-identification as one. Nowhere in the OP does it state anything about money changing hands. If you want to ask that question, then do, but the OP doesn’t ask it here.

Perhaps you can call yourself an artist, whenever you feel like it but that does not make you one. I think you are an artist when others look at your work and believe you are.

This is funny. Now I’m the liberal in the group?

If you call yourself an artist, then you’re an artist. That doesn’t commit anyone to buying your works, any more than your calling yourself a dentist, a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist means that you are accepted in their fraternity, either, or that you have any experience, credentials – or sales – to your credit. It doesn’t even mean that you need to create any works, as a matter of fact my opinion.

People in this forum routinely call themselves “writers”. Are they not writers because they haven’t published commercially? Am I not a sailor because I haven’t completed a transoceanic passage? Absurd.

Take the liberal view. (Gah, I can’t believe I’m saying it, either!) People are what they say they are. It doesn’t say anything at all about their qualifications to be that thing; that’s for others to judge independently.

And just because I call myself an artist doesn’t mean that others can’t say I’m a clown or a fraud, either.

@CWOTUS what you are saying is that, in your opinion, you don’t have to earn the right, you have the right? That makes sense.
I reread the question (should have done it better the first time) and it does say call yourself, not be one. my bad.

I think anyone who creates things has the right to call themselves an artist. Art is not only the appreciation of the creations of other people, but also the simple act of creating it.

I create paper clip sculptures. I am an artist.

@wundayatta : You just got even sillier. You’re not sticking with your original post. You seem to be asking “What is art?” now, and that’s not the same question as above.

They’re all related, @Hawaii_Jake. It’s kind of silly to try to keep them separate. But which of us is sillier? Is silliness an artform? Is comedy?

If they’re all related, @wundayatta, then why have different questions within the same topic? Why not have one single question on art and one tremendously long thread? Keeping them separate allows us to hone our narratives to intelligently answer questions that people are really concerned about.

Yes, comedy can be an art. Have you read any Christopher Moore? That writer makes me laugh out loud, and that’s saying something.

This question is an interesting one to look at, if you want to know what many people think art is. It devolved into name-calling and insults over art. It’s really quite funny in the end.

Wundayatta Communication is the key thing. To me, that is what all art hinges on. I think you are mistaken when you try to pin your validation as an artist on something as trivial and insubstantial as commercial success, I.e. people willing to pay money on what you “produce”. My God!! Wundayatta what a pedestrian concept!! It is so beneath you!! The whole idea of producing art for money is offensive to me. Yes, yes, I understand that great art can be produced for the essential and unequivocal need to support oneself. Mozart was subject to the vicissitudes of his “patrons”. I wonder, what would he have created for posterity if not confined and hemmed in by necessity? Mozart is a special case, lol. He made a lot of money but he was quite profiligrate (to use an old term).

Anyway, I don’‘t have all night to write this, so I better stick to my premise.

If what you want to communicate has a universal appeal it will likely have more popularity and be more commercially viable, but that doesn’t mean it’s better.
The more unusual, ground-breaking, difficult to grasp or unique your concept is, the smaller your receptive audience, the lower the likelihood that you will be understood. ….Not always true, just mostly, I think.

Many great artists were not appreciated in their own time. Some have gained popularity and acceptance later on. Many others died in obscurity and stayed there, never having received validation or vindication.Still others had to wait in limbo for hundreds of years for everyone to catch up to them and see their brilliance and understand it

So trying to bring myself back to the question at hand…..I do have to rein myself in sometimes, lol…..

To call yourself an artist I think there is only one person who matters and who can decide and that is you. If your decide no, you are not, it doesn’t mean you aren’t. It just means you have no confidence in the thing you want to communicate to people or in your ability to communicate it successfully. You may be right, you may be wrong. If you’re wrong, it’s sad. It means you never have faith in your ability to touch people’s lives and make a difference and so you don’t feel affirmed as an artist. If you are right, and this will only happen if you, as a person have nothing to say and no good way to communicate it, it is also sad, but for a different reason. Maybe your impulse to create falls on fallow ground. Maybe your desire to create outstrips your abilities. It is such a beautiful thing to even strive to create art. And there is satisfaction in the process that is a beautiful part of just being human. to me, that is enough. You may never know the people whose lives you have touched. You may never know that someone became a different person in some profound or less dramatic way because of you and because you cared enough to try to communicate something that was important to you.

Last thought, stay with me.
It seems to me, in this day and age, with so much competing for people’s attention, to be able to #1, arrest someone’s attention, and #2 profoundly affect them in some way shape or form, you have garnered a jewel much more precious than mere dollars.

If, additionally, you helped them toward an experience that was spiritually uplifting, that gave them new insights on life, other people, or their own self, it is even more impressive.

People spend money on all kinds of things that mean nothing to them. They buy things that they never use or look at. We live in a very acquisitive and materialistic culture.

What if someone buys your book and doesn’t read it? Does it still count toward validating you as an artist?
What if someone doesn’t buy your book but comes to hear a free reading and is deeply moved and influenced by it? Does that affirm you as an artist or not? I think the second instance is so much more meaningful. No money has changed hands. But something much more valuable has been exchanged.

Thanks for the better-articulated validation of what I was trying to say (with a lot less effort), @Earthgirl. Cave paintings are art. So is a lot of graffiti. A good joke or story can be artistic. A lot of dance moves are art. I’ve written some love letters in my time that I think were art in their fashion.

Most of these things that I’ve mentioned never won approval by much of the intended audience (I’m guessing about the cave art; probably some Neanderthal father bitched at his son for “wasting time making marks on walls” when he could have been out hunting and being productive). I can tell you for a stone fact that more than half of my love letters were wasted. (The other half resulted in art of a different kind. I’m not going into that here.)

I’m still amazed to find myself on the liberal side here. Art is everywhere. Artists are anyone who think they are… and some who wouldn’t think they are.

CWOTUS I was worried that I might have to write an entire book outlining my aesthetic philosophy here, but, hopefullly, most of what I meant to say got across, lol. I’m glad you appreciated it.

hmmm, love letters, how beautiful…did you save them? Did you wax poetic?!! Do tell!

I think you might be right about the Neanderthal father and the cave paintings….damn, sometimes trying to create is a lonely task…

Cave paintings not being appreciated in therir own time is sad, but love letters falling on deaf ears, ah well, what more perfect example could be had of a lost art and a thankless task?

Shoot. I should have written them to you.

oh man,I love love letters….

Wundayatta Believe it or not I was tired when I wrote that and I forgot another point that I wanted to make. I already sort of implied it but I phrased it a little more poetically.

Time is actually more valuable than money. We all only have so much of it. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, when it’s your turn to go you can’t buy out of it (you have to cash out,lol) When someone gives you their time it is not nothing.

While it’s true that paying shows someone values your work there are many cases, take internet piracy for example, when people value something but refuse to pay for it if they don’t have to. I don’t think that means that they don’t value it and admire it.
Time is money, they say. Why am I wasting my time on this? people will often ask.

Ok, I have a feeling I will never convince you. You want an objective quantifiable sign that your art is worth something or you refuse to call it art. There is no objectifiable measure. It is emotion based. We can intellectuallly analyze an artist’s work, and we can critique it, and we can point out things that make it good or great. We can pick on things that we don’t like about it. But the important thing is that it engages us, it says something to us, it creates a dynamic between artist and receiver. The responsibility is on the artist to try to communicate what they are trying to communicate as clearly as possible so it can be understood. But there is also a responsibility that lies with the viewer/receiver of the art and that is to be open, receptive, and pay attention. So it is a mutual give and take. But then there are a million aesthetic theories. This is only part of mine and I feel like I’m getting a little off track so I will end here.

Is my work valuable to you? Am I valuable to you? Is there a difference between the two questions? Am I my work?

Do you want me around? Do you want me to do things for you? (Not you, personally, of course, but the plural you).

How do people show you they want you or your work? One way is they offer to compensate you for it. Another way is that they are willing to spend time with you. Or want to spend time with you. Another way is that they love you.

But not everyone can love you. At least, not up close. But I guess some artists have fan clubs and they get love letters all the time from their fans. They know that people appreciate their work.

But anyone can say they like anything and that doesn’t make it true. It’s easy to like something when no sacrifice is involved. Is there anyone out there who does not take the easy way out when asked what you think? Oh, it’s beautiful!

Nice.

A little white lie. Makes everything easy. Nobody’s feelings are hurt. You don’t have to explain that it does nothing for you. Or even makes you want to vomit.

There are only a few circumstances where you know for sure someone means it when they say they like something. One is when they are willing to back their liking up with money or work or something that requires a lot of effort. Another is when they seek you out in order to tell you they like your work. They didn’t have to do that and no one ever would be the wiser, but they liked what you do enough to seek you out to tell you. They want to encourage you so they can maybe hear more from you.

Without evidence, it seems to me it’s hard to consider yourself an artist. You might want to delude yourself if you are the kind of person who is capable of deluding yourself and believing it. You might decide that what you do is art and decide to call yourself an artist.

I’m a skeptic. I’m no artist. If people paid me to make music or to write, or if they sought me out to tell me they appreciated my work, I might think there was evidence to suggest I do something that is interesting or helpful or beautiful in the eyes of other people. But there is very little evidence of that sort.

So I am not an artist. This makes me sad because I would like to be able to make a living making other people’s lives more interesting. I can spend my time practicing. I can do it as a hobby. I can do it for my own amusement. I can do it in a selfish way. But I can not say I do anything I do for anyone else because no one else wants it enough to make a sacrifice for it.

I suppose it’s ok to do things for selfish reasons—because I enjoy it. It’s my life. It’s not as if I’m likely to please people doing something I don’t enjoy. It’s probably that way for most people. But it would be nice to find that what I enjoy doing is actually of serious value to others, as well. And if it were, then I might be able to think of myself as an artist. But until then, if then ever comes, it’s just something I can look at all the other talented people around me and see, and hope that some day I might be as good as they are.

Ah, @wundayatta… some days you’re a great bullshit artist.

Wundayatta I get what you’re saying about little white lies, but do you seriously believe that every single person who ever gave you a complement on your work is bullshitting you? If you are that skeptical and cynical about people I don’t even know why you would care if they like your work or not. Why isn’t it enough for you that you are happy with your work yourself? That you enjoy the process? What is this obsession with the title of Artist with a capitol A? I don’t get it. Outside affirmation is great, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that I don’t buy that it’s essential to have it in order to make you an artist. And I also think that a person can judge their own work, maybe not objectively, but enough so that they can be reasonably certain that they are’t just deluding themselves into thinking they are an artist when they are not.
sheesh, man,you are one tough customer!

Why isn’t it enough for you that you are happy with your work yourself? That you enjoy the process? What is this obsession with the title of Artist with a capitol A? I don’t get it.

Well that is the key, of course. When I am healthy, it is enough. And when I start thinking about what others think and whether they really mean it or not, it is time to start watching myself, because that could be the beginning of the slippery slope. Or, as I hope, it’s just a sign a little blip and I will feel better soon.

But this is how I think. It’s not bullshit. On good days I don’t believe it and it doesn’t matter. But when I’m not feeling good about myself, it is the first nail in the coffin. The first sign that nothing I did ever mattered and no one cares and they really shouldn’t care because they are right. That, I’m afraid, is the deep underlying truth about me, and I spend my happy days blissfully able to ignore it.

Ignorance is bliss, as in ignoring the truth. Seeing the truth is the last step before death, I think. Doesn’t that sound suitably melodramatic? As I fly towards the pavement head first, I will finally see the truth I have been hiding from, and realize that I really am doing the right thing.

But we are safe from that now. Hah! Did you notice that? I wrote that as if assuming people cared. A sign that my deep inner assumption is that I do matter. Even though I know I don’t—at least, not on any cosmic level. Probably not even in any minor evolutionary way.

Which brings us back to the point that if I don’t matter, the only reason to do any work at all is because it is fun. It is engrossing. It doesn’t matter if it does anything for anyone else. Except I always have this delusion that I could be valuable to others and that if I am, that might somehow make me more secure. It seems like it matters whether people like me or people appreciate my work. But then, we’re back to the original premise and of course this endless circular discussion which, in my case, has no plausible answer. There is no proof and can be no proof of my worth. So I have to fake it and pretend I am worthy. On good days, that’s easy. On bad days—well, the fewer of those, the better.

@CWOTUS—was that entertaining? ;-)

No, not so entertaining, to be honest.

You remind me – thankfully tonight only on this topic – of my 87-year-old uncle. You may recall that I’ve been living with him this winter while his more immediate family is out of state, because he shouldn’t be alone for too long.

He rails constantly about the way things “should be” and all of the ways that government and culture are going to hell now because “they don’t do things the way they should”, meaning, “everyone else” (me included) and “the way he would have them do things.” I’ve given up trying to get him to relax, go with the flow, embrace the difference, don’t worry about things. No use. He frets about everything in the world, none of which he can control any longer. (And little enough of which he could control when he was in his prime, same as you or me.)

It’s not up to him to decide what the rules should be for everyone else’s life. I’ve mostly given up trying to have the discussion with him. You may note that I don’t think you’re a lost cause, which is why I’m still engaged in the discussion with you.

You should learn from that: It’s not up to you, or me, or your great-aunt Marie what people call themselves in this regard. You get to decide about yourself. Others get to decide about themselves. (In addition, we can all decide – for ourselves, at least – about others on our own, too.) Fortunately we haven’t (yet) regulated “art” to the degree that boards, certifications and regulations must apply in order for someone to be qualified to call himself or herself “artist”. (It’s not like nursing, barbering, doctoring, lawyering, teaching, engineering – you name it – where you have to pass a test, get a license, join a board – you name it – to be part of the fraternity.)

If you don’t consider yourself an artist, then you don’t have to accept the mantle, even if others try to bestow it. If you do consider yourself an artist, then likewise it matters not what the rest of the world says.

Chillax, @wundayatta, if you don’t think you’re an artist, then I won’t try to make the claim for you. If you want to make the claim, then I cannot and will not gainsay you.

Damn! That’s just totally depressing. If I had a rain machine, I’d place it over your house and turn it on. Of course, with my luck, I’d have forgotten to pay the water bill, and nothing would happen.

Or worse, if you’re of that mindset, you’d discover that I enjoy rain. Bring it!

People are paid to make pretty things every day. It doesn’t make them artists.

Whether or not you’re an artist has neither to do with how other people see you or how you see yourself. It just is.

It’s how you respond to the world and shape things around you. Even without an audience.