Single word request: a notable representative of a discipline

Question

e.g. Picasso and Braque - Cubism

Picasso and Braque were "important representatives" of Cubism

Is there a word to replace "important representatives"?

Picasso and Braque are widely regarded as having created/invented the genre of cubism, and therefore to describe them as "important representatives" is somewhat of an understatement. "Picasso and Braque were the founders of Cubism. — Greybeard, Mar 23 '20 at 15:32
Pioneers. There was an exhibition entitled: Braque and Picasso: Pioneering Cubism — Tinfoil Hat, Mar 23 '20 at 15:44
The duplicate asks for a hypernym, admittedly, but all the obvious answers (epitome / paragon / paradigm / archetype ...) are given. — Edwin Ashworth, Mar 23 '20 at 16:30
thanks. I think the example was misleading as Picasso and Braque are anchored to Cubism in a way that I do not wish to convey. I thought there may be a latin expression (for example) for the most notable contributors to a particular discipline (not necessarily the "founders") — User11, Mar 23 '20 at 17:12
"Picasso and Braque were Cubist masters"? "...masters of Cubism"? — Old Brixtonian, Mar 23 '20 at 18:17
For posterity, I would also like to suggest icon: a person or thing regarded as a representative symbol or as worthy of veneration. So: Picasso and Braque are* icons of Cubism. *use present tense — Tinfoil Hat, Mar 24 '20 at 02:07

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 23 '20 at 16:02

2

A representative of something can be notable or important in different ways, so the choice of the word will depend on the kind of importance that one has in mind. As has already been suggested in the comments, Picasso and Braque can be regarded as important representatives of cubism because they started that artistic movement; if that's what one has in mind, one will say that they were the founders of cubism. They are also important in that many of the people who don't know much about painting in general or cubism in particular, will know that they were cubists; if that's what one has in mind, one will say that they are the best known cubists.

What one may also have in mind, is that cubism is often defined by reference to their work: when one wants to teach somebody what cubism is, one will probably first point to their paintings. Whoever else may have been a cubist, they certainly were. Somebody who denied that Picasso was a cubist would be displaying a confusion about what the word cubism means. If that's the idea one wishes to express, one can say that they are paradigmatic cubists.

answered Mar 23 '20 at 16:02

jsw29

8,463

Use paradigmatic* when you're talking about things that are archetypal or representative of some category and you want to sound impressive. You'll come across it if you study the subject of linguistics, where "paradigmatic analysis" is one way of analyzing a text, by examining patterns within it. The Greek word for "pattern," paradeigma, is the root of paradigmatic.* I'm left with the general impression that supports my preference for the more common *archetypal* over *paradigmatic* for OP's context. – FumbleFingers Mar 23 '20 at 16:21
@FumbleFingers, it is true that archetypal can also be used here; whether paradigmatic or archetypal is more pretentious (sounds more impressive) is a matter of taste. For some people, the term archetypal is strongly associated with Jungian psychology, where it is a technical term, and that may be a reason for avoiding it when one does not wish to invoke these associations. Paradigm on the other hand, invokes associations with Platonism, which are quite illuminating here. Incidentally, did you really intend most of your comment to be a link? – jsw29 Mar 23 '20 at 18:46
Yeah - sorry if my "extended link text" causes legibility issues on some displays. One thing I *did* find interesting was that when I tried comparing was the archetypal* model* with was the paradigmatic* model* on NGrams, there were no results for the latter. *But* when I removed the word *was*, the two forms came out about equally common. – FumbleFingers Mar 24 '20 at 15:22
...which lends support to the stuff cited in my earlier comment (implying that *paradigmatic* is more likely to be applied to a method / approach, whereas *archetypal* works better for *actual instances* of whatever is being referenced). – FumbleFingers Mar 24 '20 at 15:24

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 23 '20 at 16:22

People who are "important representatives" can be said to be

renowned
ADJECTIVE

Known or talked about by many people; famous.
The towering walls were covered with paintings of the world's most renowned artists.

(from Lexico)

Picasso and Braque were renowned pioneers of Cubism.

The word pioneer prompted by @TinfoilHat.

Single word request: a notable representative of a discipline

2 Answers2