[jammies]

If anyone can declare themselves an artist, and any artist can declare what is art, then "art" becomes a meaningless concept. If "art" is meaningless, then "artist" is equally meaningless, and so the statement that anyone can be an artist and define their art is also meaningless, and thus cannot be true.

Ideas are easy. Skilfully expressing an idea within a medium is hard. Expressing such an idea in a way that the idea is transmitted with both fidelity and force is another magnitude of difficulty higher. For me, it comes down to this: if there is no mastery of technique, it's not art. An artist must necessarily be a craftsman, but a craftsman is not necessarily an artist.