Do you consider yourself an artist?Do you consider yourself professional?

What makes you an artist (or not)?What makes you a professional (or not)?

In your group, use your discussions to form 3 definitions

ArtistProfessionalArtistic Professional

“regular public exhibitions of art work; offering work for sale, or selling work; eligible for or has been awarded a government grant; selected for public exhibition, awards or prizes; has secured work or consultancies on the basis of professional expertise; has had work acquired for public or private collections; is a member of a professional association on the basis of his/her status as a professional artist.”National Association for the Visual Arts (Australia)

“..this survey, like its predecessors, is concerned with serious, practising professional artists. The seriousness is judged in terms of a self-assessed commitment to artistic work as a major aspect of the artist’s working life, even if arts-related work is not the main source of income. The practising aspect means that we confine our attention to artists currently working or seeking to work in their chosen occupation. The term professional is intended to indicate a degree of training, experience or talent and a manner of working that qualify artists to have their work judged against the highest professional standards of the relevant occupation.”Don't give up your day job: an economic study of professional artists in Australia – Australia Council for the Arts

“Any person who creates or gives expression to, or recreates works of art, who considers his artistic creation to be an essential part of his life, who contributes in this way to the development of art and culture and who is or asks to be recognised as an artist, whether or not he is bound by any relations of employment or association.”

UNESCO - 1980

(an artist is) hypersensitive, aggressive, autonomous, and independent, preoccupied with work to the exclusion of social activity, intolerant of order and seeking novelty and change, suffused with intense but chaotic emotions, and opposed to the conventional and banal. (Steptoe, 1998: 253)

Steptoe, A. (1998) ‘Artistic Temperament in the Italian Renaissance: A Study of

Giorgio Vasari’s Lives’, in A. Steptoe (ed.) Genius and the Mind: Studies ofCreativity and Temperament, pp. 253–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

1. the amount of time spent on artistic work

2. the amount of income derived from artistic activities

3. the reputation as an artist among the general public

4. recognition among other artists

5. the quality of artistic work

produced

6. membership of a

professional artists, group or

association

7. a professional qualification in

the arts

8. the subjective self-evaluation

of being an artist.Frey, B. & Pommerehne, W. 1989, Muses and Markets: Explorations in the Economics of the Arts, Basil Blackwell