When did the word "artist" become an insult?

Okay, it might be just me, but this is the feeling I've been getting lately when people say "artistic":

Artistic = No commercial instinct. Also: Artistic = Controlling, inflexible, difficult to work with. And: Artistic = Doesn't care about budget or deadlines.

So. When someone refers to me as an "artist" in a conversation or an evaluation, I always raise an eyebrow and wonder what they're really saying. In a commercial world, "art" is something created by the classicists, displayed in dusty galleries. "Art" doesn't sell. "Art" costs too much money. "Art" takes too much time. "Art" doesn't appease the investors.

That's a pretty sorry way to look at it. As far as I'm concerned, when a craft is well-executed, it becomes art. And quality sells. And quality usually takes time, and often quite a bit of money. And you get what you pay for.

For the record, I'm no artist. I get paid to design games and write stories, and that's about all that I'm good at, so that's what I do. I would never claim that anything I've ever done deserves to be called a work of art. I'm happy enough if people are entertained by what I do, and perhaps at some point, somewhere down the line, something I write, design, direct, or lend a hand to in some way will deserve to be defined as Art (with a capital 'A'). But that's not a goal or an ambition. I'm perfectly happy being a commercial craftsman.

And in the meantime, whenever I'm pigeon-holed as an "artist" or when my work is branded "artistic", I'll remain very, very skeptical.  ¶ 15:16