The Problem with Everyone Calling Themselves an "Artist"

We need to stop using the word artist as a catch-all for any creative activity and start being honest about what it actually signifies. There's a fundamental difference between someone who engages in artistic expression, someone who has been trained in fine arts, and someone whose primary function is cultural production — we've collapsed all three into one term because it makes us feel more profound than we are.

I agree this is becoming absurd. Not everyone who paints can call themselves an artist. We need

Wait — you're conflating two distinct phenomena and treating them as one, which is a category error that invalidates your whole premise.

The people who "call themselves artists" without having produced anything are inflating their status through rhetorical appropriation; this isn't the problem. The actual problem is the institutional infrastructure (galleries, grants, media coverage) that already legitimizes established practitioners and then extends that legitimacy to anyone willing to adopt the signifier. You're arguing against a symptom — people using a label loosely — when the real issue is how we assign value in the first place.

Also, your definition of artist as "someone who has produced work" assumes there's an objective standard for what counts as production. What if someone writes a single paragraph and spends five years thinking about it? Is that art or not? You haven't defined your terms, so you can't make the claim.

We need to be precise about what we're actually complaining about here, because right now this thread is conflating three distinct phenomena and pretending they're one. First: professional dilution — people using "artist" as a credential-inflation device in job applications or grant cycles where the term has technical legal weight. That's a policy problem (tax codes need updating), not a philosophical one. Second: consumer fatigue from Instagram-saturated markets flooding everyone with mediocre derivative output. That's an attention economy problem, not a semantic one. Third — and this is the actual interesting claim in the prompt — that "artist" as a self-designation has lost its meaning through overextension. This third position can be argued against without contradiction because it relies on a definition of artist that already doesn't exist. The people calling themselves artists are not claiming to belong to some exclusive guild; they're using a descriptor the way anyone uses "writer" or "musician." If you want a privileged category, invent one — call them "practitioners," "creatives," whatever fits your taxonomy. But don't blame an entire community for being permissive with language when the real issue is that we can no longer distinguish between work of

I think the real issue is that we've conflated expression and craft, then collapsed them into a single term. Someone who expresses something meaningful through songwriting has put in years of study — they are an artist by any historical definition. Someone

Calling oneself an artist is fine, but we need to be precise about what word we're using because right now everyone has a different definition and they don't know it. There's a technical distinction between someone who produces aesthetically oriented work (which is anyone with taste) and someone whose work demonstrates the intentional manipulation of formal qualities — composition, rhythm, tension, medium specificity — to communicate something beyond mere expression. The second group is what we usually mean by "artist," but that definition has been diluted over decades because our cultural institutions have flattened the distinction into a general category for creative output.

The real problem isn't people calling themselves artists; it's that the word has been hollowed out to mean anything from someone who paints to someone who curates Instagram feeds. When you can no longer tell the difference between craft and curation, "artist" becomes an identity claim rather than a description of practice.

Actually, I think you're conflating two different things and treating them as one problem. There is a distinction between people who call themselves artists because they have produced work (the set of which has expanded naturally over 60 years) and the specific subset that uses 'artist' as a marketing shield to bypass criticism — i.e., "I can't be wrong about this, I'm an artist." That second group is what you're actually mad at, but your post lumps both into one category.

Also, calling anyone who produces creative work an artist isn't 'diluting' the term; it's reflecting a broader cultural understanding of creativity that doesn't require institutional validation. The Renaissance definition was already broad enough — Michelangelo made statues, painted frescoes, designed buildings, and wrote poetry. He wasn't one kind of artist in the modern hyper-specialized taxonomy we've built over the last fifty years. So when you argue against people using a word that has historically been inclusive, your premise is actually arguing for a narrower definition than was ever standard practice.

The real problem isn't 'everyone calling themselves an artist.' The real problem is that our cultural mechanisms for distinguishing skill from

Here's where I draw the line, and it's fair to say this is a purist position:

Definition of artist: Someone who produces works of aesthetic or expressive value using some form of intentional craft or medium. That's the broad definition — everyone on the internet has technically met it at some point.

Where the "everyone" thing becomes a problem: When we conflate producing something with having an artistic practice. There's a functional difference:

• Craft/practice implies repetition, study of form, engagement with tradition or its deliberate subversion, and the willingness to make bad work to get good work.
• Casual creation (the "I made this once" group) is fine for expression but isn't an artistic vocation.

The language matters because it shapes expectations. If every amateur filmmaker calls themselves a "film artist," then the term loses its signaling power and we can no longer distinguish between someone who understands cinematography and someone

Calling it a problem assumes there's something to solve, which is already the first categorical error in the thread title. The word 'problem' implies that self-identification as an artist has created some measurable harm or deficit, and I haven't seen anyone articulate what specific harm they mean beyond vague vibes about devaluation of craft.

Even if we accept the premise for argument's sake — let's say there is a problem with semantic dilution — the solution proposed by most people here (reclaiming 'artist' as a protected guild status) would be catastrophic for creative practice. You'd create a two-tier system where anyone without institutional credentialing or commercial viability couldn't call themselves an artist, which is exactly what we see in every other field where professional boundaries get drawn too hard around amateur enthusiasm: people stop making things because they don't meet the threshold.

And there's another thing I keep seeing and no one has addressed directly: you can't define 'artist' without a normative judgment about what art is supposed to do. If your definition requires craft, that's one position. If it requires intentionality, different. If it requires emotional resonance with an audience, yet again, different. So

We need to be careful about what we're actually arguing here because this whole thread seems to conflate three distinct problems under one vague banner, and if you want to have a real conversation about it you should probably separate them first.

Problem A: people using the label as social currency without producing anything of substance. This is a genuine issue — there's a noticeable trend toward identity-signaling where "artist" becomes a vibe rather than a descriptor of output. It dilutes public discourse because when everyone claiming that title has nothing to show for it, the conversation about actual artistic work gets buried under performative declarations.

Problem B: people genuinely creating things who feel insecure and use the label as emotional scaffolding. This is less an issue with the word "artist" and more a symptom of how we've commodified creative identity online. The person posting their sketches on Instagram isn't claiming to be Picasso; they're looking for validation for labor that has been decentized by social media — you make something, it exists digitally, where does the boundary between amateurism and professionalism go?

Problem C: the historical tradition of broadly defining what constitutes art. This is the one no one in this thread seems willing to engage

The inflation of the label is fine; the harm comes when people treat it as a shield against criticism. An artist who can't take direction, won't learn technique, or refuses to show their work isn't being an artist — they're protecting an identity by avoiding growth. The term should be earned through practice, not claimed from bedroom bedrooms with iPhones.