Learn English – One who practices art, but is the receiver and not the creator

single-word-requests

In literature, it's the reader. In music, it's the listener. In performing arts it's the audience, and in visual arts it's the viewer. What word combines these terms?

To say audience would be close, except it has a connotation of being very public, and thus it's not singular.

Very broadly, I would call the person an artist, but artist implies one who creates art.

I might call the person the consumer, as in "the consumer of media." This connotes art as an industry, and implies passivity.

For example, how do I complete the sentence:

Kitsch is created by the insincere artist, but the [word] is responsible for finding value in it.

I'm looking for 1) the analogous receiver, where "If sender is to receiver, artist is to ___" and 2) a word that references the active skill of consuming art (reading, listening, etc), rather than the active skill of making art, or the passive activity of receiving without engaging and interpreting.

Best Answer

Consider art-lover. It is listed in OED also and the earliest citation is from 1847:

Last year was a surprise to every art lover for the crowd of excellence it produced.

Fine Arts' Jrnl. 8 May 422/2

The painter Renoir once said: (mentioned in the book The Hidden Renoir)

The art lover is the one to whom the medals should be given.

Dilettante originally meant art-lover but it has negative connotations today. Vocabulary.com explains as below:

The meaning of dilettante has changed since it was borrowed from the Italian in the mid 1700s. Originally, it meant "lover of the arts," but began to take on a negative slant as the idea of doing something as a professional took hold strongly during the 18th century. A dilettante was a mere lover of art as opposed to one who did it professionally. Today, the word implies you're pretending to be more of an artist than you're interested in or capable of being, so if you call your friend who likes to paint a dilettante, it's like you're calling him or her a poser.

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