My school's art department has a very strict attendance policy.

The reason for the strict attendance policy is because the university, as a college in an urban area rife with an incalculable amount of hipsters, acknowledges 2 things: A) Everybody wants to be an artist, and B) Everybody thinks art classes are gonna be cake.

Thing B is the more obvious of the two, and so the department is just trying to weed out the slackers. Thing A seems like a regional... thing. The Midway area is pretty urban, and a city-bound college attracts quite a lot of hipster-types who tend to feel that their purpose in life is to express themselves. That's awesome, as far as I can tell, but what about this romantic notion of being an artist? Why does everybody seem to want to be an artist?

It actually sounds like we can't stand the idea of lacking a voice. We all seem to have something to say, and our generation is always looking for the most interesting way of saying what we have to say. As a result, art has gone through so many interesting transitions throughout history. There was the rigidness of the masters of the High Renaissance, the shallowness of the painterly artists catering to the upper class of the Rococo, and the deconstructionist view of art from the Dada movement... And where are we now?

We're now all so overexposed to art from all different areas of the world. Most of us are now greatly influenced by the art of Japanese cartoon shows, and there are few who can say that they have not tried to render a Disney character or two in their youth. Disney is great, though, because they employ many very inspiring artists, but what about all that anime?

There are how-to-draw books of all sorts catering to all sorts of people who all very different ideas of what art is. Is is appropriate for a book concerning the anatomical detail of the masters to be on the same shelf as an entire series of How To Draw Manga instructional books (ranging from one about chibis to one focusing solely on the lewd hentai genre). Now, every preteen weeaboo can call him or herself an artist because they picked up a book that tells them how to draw popular TV characters. What happens to the kids who call themselves artists because they've studied composition, shape, and taken a more traditional approach to art education?

Everybody says they're an artist. Am I really an artist anymore?