In the Washington Post (July 27 issue) article titled, “Figuring out what matters in a midlife ‘Is this all there is?’ crisis” the columnist, Carolyn Hax writes as follows:
“Tweak as you need to, of course: Travelers should travel and givers
should give and artists should art (that’s a verb, right?). If mere
tweaks don’t produce meaning, then, yes, take these recent deaths as
your hint to reevaluate who you are and what path you want to take. –
– – Your life is right where you want it – right where your choices took you — and that better lighting is all you need to see its
beauty.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/carolyn-hax-figuring-out-what-matters-in-a-midlife-is-this-all-there-is-crisis/2014/07/27/d3cceeb8-0c5c-11e4-8341-b8072b1e7348_story.html?wpisrc=nl%5fmost
She asks “that (art) is a verb, right?” by herself.
But both of CED and OED provide definitions of “art(s)” only as a noun.
I’ve been told that most of nouns are transferable to verbs by some of respectful users several times in this site. But as the author is asking “’art,’ that’s a verb, right?,” even she doesn’t seem to be very confident of her usage of this specific word as a verb, much less a non-native English speaker like me.
Is it quite common to use “art” as a verb in the meaning of “produce / create” art (works) as shown in the above quote?
Best Answer
It is definitely not common, and just as you suspected it is a play on the previous two examples in the list of "Travelers" and "Givers".
It doesn't quite perfectly follow a trend: Traveler, Giver, Artist -- because the first two use the English language -er suffix to suggest the "actioner" of a verb (an action), and "Artist" is not "Arter".
But this is the syntactical joke being made: A traveler is one who travels, as an artist is one who "arts".
But if the question is whether or not this is common practice in English, then no, it is definitely not.
The act of artistic expression is understood to be an act of creation or construction, to do or make or create something.
The common expressions are: an artist creates...; an artist makes...; an artist expresses...and other such phrase statements.
Whereas it is proper and common English practice to say: a traveler travels; a giver gives.