ARTISTS AND NOT ARTISTS
In a proper discussion about what happens in the art of our time we would necessarily have to admit that today there is not only one type of artist, but many. The extension of the mediums, techniques, methods, forms, areas and purposes of artistic production has multiplied, in the process, the specific variants of that profession that we call plastic artist or visual artist. Hence, it is inaccurate to use a narrow and exclusive designation to refer to that creator of visuality, whether he belongs to the traditional, modern or the open expressive mosaic type that, due to superficiality and discursive incapacity, we usually call "contemporary". Saying ARTIST is no longer enough, so it is necessary to specify which one of the many doers of the aesthetic "universe" we are referring to.
The twentieth century, with its non-stopping scientific-technological revolution and the freedom of the agent spirit, interweaved various artistic manifestations, and these with others of material and spiritual culture. The art and extra-artistic fields achieved combinations that became channels of individual subjectivity. Cinematography, costumes, the body, the most varied shows and rituals, the mass media, the urban context, the video and the immaterial assumptions of human occurrence gave way to new variants of visual and audiovisual expression.
Beyond the classifications that respond to particularities of the artistic modus operandi are those of a psychological, social, ideological, ethical and economic nature, frequently used in interpersonal communication: avant-garde, conservative, mediocre, rich, false, superficial , philosophical, romantic, sensual, erotic, commercial, opportunistic, rebellious, satirical, informal, schematic, unhappy, poor, megalomaniac, rural, urban, calculating, repetitive, renovating, neurotic, mimetic, pedestrian, eclectic, dependent, original, unstable, recurrent, simulator and iconoclast artist, among others. Those are nominations that portray universal attributes of the behavior and essence of the artists in relation to their context, origin, vital links, background and purposes. The latter also constitute a demonstration that to say ARTIST is a vague generalization, every time the term encompasses a greater number of meanings.