Why and How to Define an Artist: Types of Definitions and Their Implications for Empirical Research Results

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the study of the arts and artists in the social sciences, particularly in sociology but also in economics and political science. This naturally leads us to the theoretical debate about what an artist is in modern and more especially in postmodern society. It also brings up for discussion the methodological — and more practical — problem how to define who an artist is at a given time and space. The need to contrast “who” and “what” indicates that the study of the artists is due to more than one type of knowledge constituting interest (Habermasian Erkenntnis intresse).

“But what is it, to be an artist? Nothing shows up the general human dislike of thinking, and man’s innate craving to be comfortable, better than his attitude to this question.”

Thomas Mann, Tonio Kröger, 1978 (1903).

“What our postmodern age has yet to resolve for itself is its own cultural and social definition of the artist, which may also involve a redefinition of how artists see themselves. — It may well be that the notion of the artist as a special individual — has been replaced by a quite different sort of social character, one who prefers to forfeit the charismatic role, and who has scaled down his ambitions to conform to society’s idea of the normalized job-holder.”

Suzi Gablik, Has Modernism Failed?, 1986.