What Is An Artist?
Because of AI there is a growing, sometimes vitriolic debate on what art is and what an artist is. As a philosophical type, I find the debate fascinating because this topic has been discussed for centuries in various forms such as the study of aesthetics, how things get their meanings, the allowed techniques of art, secret symbology, the social context of art, etc. Now we have managed to stuff thousands of years of art knowledge into Machine Learning models and so there is a new ARTificial artist in town shaking things up. Whatever it is, it would seem it has been important to humans well into prehistoric times since we find astonishing works of art on ancient cave walls.
We might also ask what is the purpose of art? This has a lot of valid and varied answers. Art has been used for all sorts of purposes such as:
- Glorification of God or royalty
- Project wealth or power
- Decoration and beautification
- Historical documentation
- Political statements
- Clever social commentary
- Bewilderment, awe, inspiration and shock
- Therapy
- To entertain and delight
To simplify things we can say an artist is anybody who makes art, no matter how they make it. Now all we need to do is…