What is "Fine Art"?

[JBrunner]

See synonyms for: fine art / fine arts
noun
a visual art considered to have been created primarily for aesthetic purposes and judged for its beauty and meaningfulness, specifically, painting, sculpture, drawing, watercolor, graphics, and architecture.

They left out photography, probably to avoid discussions like this, LOL

 

[Grandpa Ron]

Luis, I have never met Art so I do not know what kind if person he or she is.

I do know there are fine wines, fine double shotguns, fine dining and fine paintings and of course fine photography. I also know "Fine Art" cannot be easily defined.

Two summers ago I was in and art gallery with a large collection of the "Hudson Valley School" paintings of the valley and surrounding county side. They were exquisite examples of 19th century brush on canvas art. As I ventured into the next gallery a few folk were practically cooing over the work of some impressionist art. These paintings were to me, simply line strokes on paper. If the tittle did not tell you it was "a horse in the field" my first impression was it showed an Indy race car winning the final lap. Still both forms of "Art" had equal stature at the gallery.

So I have to stick with my definition of "Fine Art", it is product that sells and is held in high esteem in its intended market place.

 

[Vaughn]

See synonyms for: fine art / fine arts
noun
a visual art considered to have been created primarily for aesthetic purposes and judged for its beauty and meaningfulness, specifically, painting, sculpture, drawing, watercolor, graphics, and architecture.

They left out photography, probably to avoid discussions like this, LOL

Photography is usually lumped in the graphic arts, I found out.

 

[Pieter12]

Luis, I have never met Art so I do not know what kind if person he or she is.

I do know there are fine wines, fine double shotguns, fine dining and fine paintings and of course fine photography. I also know "Fine Art" cannot be easily defined.

Two summers ago I was in and art gallery with a large collection of the "Hudson Valley School" paintings of the valley and surrounding county side. They were exquisite examples of 19th century brush on canvas art. As I ventured into the next gallery a few folk were practically cooing over the work of some impressionist art. These paintings were to me, simply line strokes on paper. If the tittle did not tell you it was "a horse in the field" my first impression was it showed an Indy race car winning the final lap. Still both forms of "Art" had equal stature at the gallery.

So I have to stick with my definition of "Fine Art", it is product that sells and is held in high esteem in its intended market place.

Tell that to Van Gogh.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

See synonyms for: fine art / fine arts
noun
a visual art considered to have been created primarily for aesthetic purposes and judged for its beauty and meaningfulness, specifically, painting, sculpture, drawing, watercolor, graphics, and architecture.

They left out photography, probably to avoid discussions like this, LOL

Using that definition, I'd say "fine art" can also be fitted into "art for art's sake" - i.e. artwork created to have no practical application, merely to provoke an aesthetic response. This is distinct from "applied arts" such as architecture, industrial design, or even closer to the gray area between "fine art" and "applied art", ceramics like tea kettles or serving plates. The portion of photography that falls under "fine art" is the portion like landscapes and nudes that serve no other purpose than aesthetic. Photojournalism, while it can be aesthetic, exists primarily to communicate information about events, and advertising/commercial photography is the same except it conveys information about products. Yes, Avedon's Dovima with Elephants is aesthetic, and it can be found on many art gallery walls and in collections of serious photography enthusiasts, but it was first a commercial image to sell Dior dresses. Avedon's American West portraits, however, are purely "fine art" because they were created to exist for their own sake.

 

[Pieter12]

Using that definition, I'd say "fine art" can also be fitted into "art for art's sake" - i.e. artwork created to have no practical application, merely to provoke an aesthetic response. This is distinct from "applied arts" such as architecture, industrial design, or even closer to the gray area between "fine art" and "applied art", ceramics like tea kettles or serving plates. The portion of photography that falls under "fine art" is the portion like landscapes and nudes that serve no other purpose than aesthetic. Photojournalism, while it can be aesthetic, exists primarily to communicate information about events, and advertising/commercial photography is the same except it conveys information about products. Yes, Avedon's Dovima with Elephants is aesthetic, and it can be found on many art gallery walls and in collections of serious photography enthusiasts, but it was first a commercial image to sell Dior dresses. Avedon's American West portraits, however, are purely "fine art" because they were created to exist for their own sake.

Avedon's Dovima with Elephants was not directly created to sell Dior fashions. Unlike Annie Leibovitz's Louis Vuitton work that is directly made for and paid for by the client for advertising purposes, it was an editorial image commissioned by the magazine, not Dior. Of course, they may have hoped Dior would place some advertising in the issue. And Dior certainly hoped to sell some clothes as a result of the image. Then you run into issues with art that has been created for posters, such as by Toulouse-Lautrec, or Weston's photos for Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Fine art is what the market and the experts at the time deem it to be. Some pieces are recognized as fine art much later than when they are created, some fall from grace after a while. It is a fickle market, a moving target.

 

[removed account4]

Photography is usually lumped in the graphic arts, I found out.

that's cause its one of the "mechanical arts"

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Avedon's Dovima with Elephants was not directly created to sell Dior fashions. Unlike Annie Leibovitz's Louis Vuitton work that is directly made for and paid for by the client for advertising purposes, it was an editorial image commissioned by the magazine, not Dior. Of course, they may have hoped Dior would place some advertising in the issue. And Dior certainly hoped to sell some clothes as a result of the image. Then you run into issues with art that has been created for posters, such as by Toulouse-Lautrec, or Weston's photos for Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Fine art is what the market and the experts at the time deem it to be. Some pieces are recognized as fine art much later than when they are created, some fall from grace after a while. It is a fickle market, a moving target.

Yes- there's a LOT of stuff that falls into a gray area. I'd say Weston's Leaves of Grass illustrations are pretty solid in the "fine art" category, because while they were made to illustrate a book, it's not like it was a science textbook, but itself already a work of art. The Tolouse-Lautrec stuff elides the commercial definition and becomes "fine art" because he worked both sides of that line, and in the end, he's been elevated into the canon of "fine artists".

 

[Pieter12]

but itself already a work of art

Interesting situation with the Whitman book. Should the book be considered a work of art? Although the photos themselves may be considered fine art, the book (or at least the copy I have) has terrible reproduction and I think it fails as fine art. I believe Weston was disappointed in it. Reproductions I have seen in other books about Weston are much better.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Interesting situation with the Whitman book. Should the book be considered a work of art? Although the photos themselves may be considered fine art, the book (or at least the copy I have) has terrible reproduction and I think it fails as fine art. I believe Weston was disappointed in it. Reproductions I have seen in other books about Weston are much better.

It may not have been a good reproduction. But the poetry itself is "fine art", and the photo illustrations for it are also "fine art" in the sense that they were created as a work in themselves in response to another piece of art. Somewhat akin to (although in a totally different vein than) Duchamp's "LHOOQ".

 

[JBrunner]

Scott, I'd be interested on your take on post #298

 

[Vaughn]

that's cause its one of the "mechanical arts"

It should not have surprised me...my university was about the third one in the country to create a photography program actually within an Art Department.

I do like the idea someone put forward that art is a result of neoteny...the retention of the characteristics of youth into maturity. I am thinking along the lines of characteristics such as learning, play, and curiosity -- and how retaining such characteristics would favor the invention of art as a way to focus and express those characteristics as individuals and as a society.

I also like the idea the art was invented to keep the wackos productively occupied so they would not interfer with the necessities of running the cave/clan/tribe.

 

[Grandpa Ron]

It has been my experience that the dictionary definitions, become excellent "jumping off points" if you will, for an incredible amounts to of varied opinions. I would be an awfully dull world if we all thought exactly the same.

 

[Pieter12]

It may not have been a good reproduction. But the poetry itself is "fine art", and the photo illustrations for it are also "fine art" in the sense that they were created as a work in themselves in response to another piece of art. Somewhat akin to (although in a totally different vein than) Duchamp's "LHOOQ".

Although the poetry and the photography may be art on their own merit, the book fails as art as far as I am concerned. Have you seen a decent version of this book?

I would have to do some research on this but my impression is Duchamp's LHOOQ was not created as a response but rather as irreverent, Dada art.

 

[Vaughn]

Interesting situation with the Whitman book. Should the book be considered a work of art? Although the photos themselves may be considered fine art, the book (or at least the copy I have) has terrible reproduction and I think it fails as fine art. I believe Weston was disappointed in it. Reproductions I have seen in other books about Weston are much better.

"...fails as fine art." Does that make it not fine art, or just not very good fine art? Or failed fine art that could become successful fine art if reprinted with excellent images?

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

It seems to me there are two facets of art, the act of creation, and the act of experience. They might revolve around the same singularity, but have utterly different reasons, meanings, and purpose. Defined, "fine art" is usually considered art that carries a visual aesthetic, as opposed to "art" which includes music, theater, performance art, literature, and any other way the vast expressions by which artists satisfy whatever reason they feel the need to create. There is no pretention, no requirement for relevance or craft involved. The phrase simply denotes visually oriented art.

Craft has nothing to do with art. It might be part of creating art and fine art, but it might also be part of creating a mundane utilitarian object or display. For the artist, craft is a means to an end. Setting type isn't writing a book, although a typesetter might still aspire to create art with their typesetting. If an artist sets out to create art, and in their own mind manages to succeed in the expression, they have created art (or fine art, as the case may be) and someone else's subjective view (i.e. "that's not art") is only valid if the artist accepts it. There is plenty of art, particularly photography (fine art by definition), that is art to an audience of one. If someone creates or "crafts" something for a purpose other than art (or fine art) and an observer sees it as art, it is art, even if only to that person. Art can be popular and considered by many to be art, or it can be completely disregarded by all but the artist or an observer (listener, feeler, whatever), or it can fall anywhere in-between. If think something is art and you don't, or visa-versa, we are both right. Because art is completely and utterly subjective in this manner, attempts to define art by litmus ("this is art, that is not") will always fail, except for personally, where they are unerringly correct.

Art is in the intent of the creator or the eye of the beholder, or both.


That's my two cents. YMMV

I think intent with any work of art is 90% of the definition of it. Now, if it succeeds at being what it is intended to be or fails is another kettle of fish entirely. I've talked about artist's intent before in other contexts, but my take is this:
If I create a piece of art and I stick the label on it "Fine Art", I have applied the proper label when the majority of my audience agrees with/accepts my label. My audience may be just me, in which case, as you said, the label is correct, whatever label I use. But when you decide to publish (in the broadest possible sense of the word publish - share with "the public") your work, the interpretation of it is no longer yours to control. And if I say "this image is a metaphor for the emptiness of the meaning of life for modern man" and 99 out of 100 viewers look at it and say "all I see is a rotten pickle", then while my intent and vision still have value to me, I have obviously failed to communicate them. The same can be said for the "fine art" label. If I call something "fine art" and 99% of my audience says "I just see titty-porn", then I've obviously failed to communicate through my work the value I see in it that makes me feel the label "fine art" is applicable.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Although the poetry and the photography may be art on their own merit, the book fails as art as far as I am concerned. Have you seen a decent version of this book?

I would have to do some research on this but my impression is Duchamp's LHOOQ was not created as a response but rather as irreverent, Dada art.

I'd say then that the Weston/Whitman book is a situation where the craft has failed the art. I've never seen a copy of the book, regardless of edition/version, so I can't say if it fails.

 

[rick shaw]

It usta wuz that i cudon spell fine art fotagrifer, butt now I iz won.

 

[Vaughn]

I have not seen the book in its entirety either. Even if the poetry is of the highest caliber, and the images and their reproduction are of the same high quality, that does not guarantee the book will be be of the same high quality. It should be at least as good -- hopefully as an art form itself, the book will surpass even the poetry and the images.

 

[Pieter12]

"...fails as fine art." Does that make it not fine art, or just not very good fine art? Or failed fine art that could become successful fine art if reprinted with excellent images?

I think since the reproduction failed the artist--Weston--the book fails as fine art. I do not have a first edition that Weston reacted so negatively to, but a much later one and the reproduction is mediocre. Apparently the original had a green cast to the photos as well as the paper, a choice the publisher made because of the book's title.

 

[0x001688936CA08]

"There is no such thing as art. There are only artists" - The Story of Art, Ernst Gombrich

Which is to say (as I read it) that something being art mostly depends on the person who creates anything that we could consider art or not. Duchamp made art from a urinal by placing in the context of an art exhibition, provoking people to consider that something is art when someone says so.

If something is 'good' or 'valid' art or fine art is a question that supposes everyone perceives things the same way and has the same frame of reference for 'good' or 'valid'. There really can't be an objective definition of fine art that is totally satisfactory; an excellent darkroom print could be technically perfect, and yet lack any artistic merit because there is no intention beyond making a technically perfect print, similarly a bad print could be an interesting work of art because the person creating has something to say with it.

 

[Michael Firstlight]

Too often "Fine art" is a euphemism for a high price tag.

 

[Pieter12]

the person creating has something to say with it.

Bingo!

 

[awty]

Tell that to Van Gogh.

I watched the William Defoe movie last night, didn't quite work as a movie, interesting cinematography.

 

[Brendan Quirk]

Using that definition, I'd say "fine art" can also be fitted into "art for art's sake" - i.e. artwork created to have no practical application, merely to provoke an aesthetic response. This is distinct from "applied arts" such as architecture, industrial design, or even closer to the gray area between "fine art" and "applied art", ceramics like tea kettles or serving plates. The portion of photography that falls under "fine art" is the portion like landscapes and nudes that serve no other purpose than aesthetic. Photojournalism, while it can be aesthetic, exists primarily to communicate information about events, and advertising/commercial photography is the same except it conveys information about products. Yes, Avedon's Dovima with Elephants is aesthetic, and it can be found on many art gallery walls and in collections of serious photography enthusiasts, but it was first a commercial image to sell Dior dresses. Avedon's American West portraits, however, are purely "fine art" because they were created to exist for their own sake.

This is my understanding.

Art:
Fine Art
Commercial Art
Decorative Art

Fine art has no useful purpose (materially useful). It need not be fine in quality. Just look at mine.