Artists like Malevich and Beuys believed that anyone can make art and that everyone should be an artist or a philosopher.
There is no consensus of what it means to be an artist
In the recent past, the most common way of defining the artist was as someone who skillfully produces physical objects. Artists were people with regular professions, like any other artisans.
Since then, the debate about who is the artist and what art is has not stopped. Different societies at different times took different positions. Interestingly, these ideas influenced not only the dominant artistic discourse but also the way how societies were organized.
In this book, we would show a variety of ideas: how the artist existed in medieval Europe, in the capitalist USA, in the USSR, in traditional African societies and the ancient kingdoms of the Middle East.
We hope that you are – the reader, using these examples, will be able to develop your model of who the artist is.