The artist's statement is a unique genre that provides a written description of an artist's creative work. Usually produced by the artists themselves, the artist's statement accompanies exhibitions, funding applications, or more recently the work presented on an artist's website. In the educational context, it provides important support for the assessment of student work. In order to find out more about the artist's statement, this study provides a corpus-based analysis of the genre, focusing, in particular, on its characteristic rhetorical functions and associated lexical features. The study reveals five rhetorical functions; i) expressing identity, ii) conceptualising function, iii) specifying motivation, iv) identifying effect on the viewer, and v) identifying creative processes and materials, each of which is realised by a set of frequently occurring lexical items. However, rather than simply providing conduits for conveying information that describes the artist's work, these rhetorical and lexical features are identified as performing a constitutive role that brings the artist's work into being. The study concludes by examining the contents of 25 ‘how to write an artist's statement’ websites, and argues that their inability to accurately reflect what occurs in practice is a consequence of neglecting the genre's complex functionality and constitutive nature.

艺术家的陈述是一种独特的类型，提供了艺术家创作作品的书面描述。通常由艺术家自己制作，艺术家的陈述会伴随展览，资金申请或最近出现在艺术家网站上的作品出现。在教育方面，它为评估学生的工作提供了重要的支持。为了找到有关艺术家陈述的更多信息，本研究提供了一种基于语料库的流派分析，尤其侧重于其典型的修辞功能和相关的词汇特征。该研究揭示了五种修辞功能：i）表达身份，ii）概念化功能，iii）指定动机，iv）确定对观看者的影响，v）确定创作过程和材料，每一个都是通过一组频繁出现的词汇项实现的。但是，这些修辞和词法特征并不仅仅是提供传达描述艺术家作品的信息的渠道，而是被确定为发挥了使艺术家作品成真的构成角色。这项研究通过检查25个“如何撰写艺术家陈述”网站的内容而得出结论，并认为它们无法准确反映实际发生的情况是由于忽视了该类型的复杂功能和构成性质。的工作成为现实。这项研究通过检查25个“如何撰写艺术家陈述”网站的内容而得出结论，并认为它们无法准确反映实际发生的情况是由于忽视了该类型的复杂功能和构成性质。的工作成为现实。该研究通过检查25个“如何撰写艺术家陈述”网站的内容得出结论，并认为它们无法准确反映实际发生的情况是由于忽略了该类型的复杂功能和构成性质。