We all name ourselves. We call ourselves artists. Nobody asks us. Nobody says you are or you aren't.
Only a bad artist thinks he has a good idea. A good artist does not need anything.
I taught a lot of art history, especially Chinese, Japanese, and Indian. But the painting classes came back. The nudes came back. Not so much the still lifes. So now our department is the worst department, partly because it has the worst facilities.
Art is too serious to be taken seriously.
As for a picture, if it isn't worth a thousand words, the hell with it.
The only and one way to say what abstract art or art-as-art is, is to say what it is not.