3D Art Fantasy Surrealism Pictures: modern surrealism artist works. Contemporary 3d digital surrealist artist George Grie pop art gallery.

Artist is a subjective term which describes a person creative in, innovative in, or adept at, their endeavors. Most often, the term describes those who create in a cultural context, such as engaging in drawing, sculpting, acting, dancing, writing, filmmaking and music - people who use imagination, and talent or skill, to create works of aesthetic value. Art historians and art critics define artists as those who produce art within a recognised provenance. Many people use the term 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 often applies to people skilled at nefarious or questionable activities, too - like "scam artist" or "bullshit artist." Billions of books, articles, essays and theses are written, academic courses created, and café discussions held in an effort to define "art" and "artist", and yet, there is no consensus amongst humans about what constitutes "art" or who is, or is not, an "artist". Most often, the discussions focus on the differences between "artist" and "technician" or "artisan," "fine art" and "applied art," or what constitutes art and what does not.

Western culture widely accepts that anyone can call themselves an "artist", however posterity ultimately decides whether the label fits. 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 "techne" means "art." In Latin, derived from the Greek word, "art" is "tecnicus", from which the English words technique, technology, technical are derived. So, though the words have evolved over millenia, their root is the same.

WORD HISTORY The word modern, first recorded in 1585 in the sense "of present or recent times," has traveled through the centuries designating things that inevitably must become old-fashioned as the word itself goes on to the next modern thing. We have now invented the word postmodern, as if we could finally fix modern in time, but even postmodern (first recorded in 1949) will seem fusty in the end, perhaps sooner than modern will. Going back to Late Latin modernus, "modern," which is derived from Latin modo in the sense "just now," the English word modern (first recorded at the beginning of the 16th century) was not originally concerned with anything that could later be considered old-fashioned. It simply meant "being at this time, now existing," an obsolete sense today. In the later 16th century, however, we begin to see the word contrasted with the word ancient and also used of technology in a way that is clearly related to our own modern way of using the word. Modern was being applied specifically to what pertained to present times and also to what was new and not old-fashioned. Thus in the 19th and 20th centuries the word could be used to designate a movement in art, modernism, which is now being followed by postmodernism.

SYNONYMS contemporary, contemporaneous, simultaneous, synchronous, concurrent, coincident, concomitant. These adjectives mean existing or occurring at the same time. Contemporary is used more often of persons, contemporaneous of events and facts: The composer Salieri was contemporary with Mozart. A rise in interest rates is often contemporaneous with an increase in inflation. Simultaneous more narrowly specifies occurrence of events at the same time: The activists organized simultaneous demonstrations in many major cities. Synchronous refers to correspondence of events in time over a short period: The dancers executed a series of synchronous movements. Concurrent implies parallelism in character or length of time: The mass murderer was given three concurrent life sentences. Coincident applies to events occurring at the same time without implying a relationship: "The resistance to the Pope's authority . . . is pretty nearly coincident with the rise of the Ottomans" (John Henry Newman). Concomitant refers to coincidence in time of events so clearly related that one seems attendant on the other: He is an adherent of Freud's theories and had a concomitant belief in the efficacy of psychoanalysis. USAGE NOTE When contemporary is used in reference to something in the past, its meaning is not always clear. Contemporary critics of Shakespeare may mean critics in his time or critics in our time. When the context does not make the meaning clear, misunderstanding can be avoided by using phrases such as critics in Shakespeare's time or modern critics. 

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