Help building the largest human-edited directory of the web Suggest URL - Open Directory Project - Become an editor

directopedia.org uses links and structure from dmoz Open Directory Project.
The contents has been generating using technology developed by scientec.

Artist is a descriptive term applied to a person who engages in an activity deemed to be an art. It is also used in a qualitative sense of a person creative in, innovative in, or adept at, an artistic practice.

Most often, the term describes those who create within a context of 'high culture', activities such as drawing, sculpture, acting, dancing, writing, filmmaking and music — people who use imagination, and talent or skill, to create works that can be judged to have an aesthetic value. Art historians and critics will define as artists those who produce art within a recognised or recognisable discipline.

The term is also used to denote highly skilled people in non-"arts" activities, as well — crafts, medicine, alchemy, mechanics, mathematics, defense (martial arts) and architecture, for example. The designation is applied to illegal activities, like a "scam artist".

There is no consensus about what constitutes "art" or who is, or is not, an "artist". Often, discussions on the subject focus on the differences between "artist" and "technician" or "entertainer," or "artisan," "fine art" and "applied art," or what constitutes art and what does not.

The Oxford English dictionary, cites broad meanings of the term "artist,"

• 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 - the opposite of a theorist.
• A follower of a manual art, such as a mechanic.
• One who makes their craft a fine art.
• One who cultivates one of the fine arts - traditionally the arts presided over by the muses.

(referenced from: C. T. Onions (1991). The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Clarendon Press Oxford. ISBN 0-19-861126-9.)

In Greek the word "techně" is often mistranslated into "art." In actuality, "techně" implies mastery of a craft (any craft.) The Latin-derived form of the word is "tecnicus", from which the English words technique, technology, technical are derived. Our word art is derived from the Latin "ars", which, though literally defined means "skill method" or "technique", holds a connotation of beauty.

Many contemporary 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 easily standardized without corruption into kitsch.

Examples of art and artist

• Actor: Laurence Olivier
• Architect: Antonio Gaudi
• Ballet: Vaslav Nijinsky
• Calligraphy: Hokusai
• Choreographer: Martha Graham
• Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach
• Computer programming: Donald Knuth
• Dancer: Isadora Duncan
• Entertainer: PT Barnum
• Fashion designer: Pierre Cardin
• Game designer: Shigeru Miyamoto
• Horticulture: André le Nôtre
• Illusionist: Houdini
• Industrial designer: Pininfarina
• Jeweller: Fabergé
• Martial Arts: Miyamoto Musashi
• Movie director: Sergei Eisenstein
• Muralist: Alicia Miranda
• Musician: Niccolo Paganini
• Novelist: Dostoevsky
• Musical instrument maker: Stradivari
• Orator: Cicero
• Painter: Leonardo da Vinci
• Photographer: Robert Mapplethorpe
• Pianist: Glenn Gould
• Playwright: Harold Pinter
• Poet: William Shakespeare
• Singer: Maria Callas
• Sculptor: Michelangelo Buonarotti
• Storyteller: el-Gahshigar

This article is based on the article "Artists" from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License. Here you find the list of authors of this article. The article can only edited within Wikipedia. Edit this article in Wikipedia.

In Wikipedia, use the <gallery> tag to display a gallery of pictures. There are also several artists who have galleries on Wikipedia such as the William-Adolphe Bouguereau gallery.

Gallery may refer to:

• Art gallery
• Gallery Project, an open-source package for creating and managing image galleries on web sites
• Gallery (band), a 1970s musical group headed by Jim Gold who are famous for their 1972 song "(It's So) Nice To Be With You."
• Gallery (magazine), one of the more popular "skin" magazines to arise in the wake of Playboy, particularly in the 1970s, which was founded by a group including Benihana restaurant-chain founder Rocky Aoki. Its Montcalm Publishing parent also published The Twilight Zone Magazine in the 1990s, apparently in part in imitation of Penthouse magazine's offshoot project Omni (magazine).
• Gallery (APA/'zine), an Amateur Press Association/fanzine produced by Richard Chandler which started with Issue #0 (Fall 1989) and ended with Issue #50 (Winter 2004)

Gallery may also refer to:

• An element in architecture, a long hallway flanked with walls or rows of columns
• A horizontal passage in an underground mine
• A collection of digital photos hosted on websites; see photo sharing

See also

• The Gallery

This article is based on the article "Galleries" from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License. Here you find the list of authors of this article. The article can only edited within Wikipedia. Edit this article in Wikipedia.