I see a lot of people who have problems with discerning the difference between the categories of art. So what is the difference?
If you search for the definition of fine art on Google or other search sites this is what you will get:
fine art
noun: fine art; plural noun: fine arts
1. creative art, especially visual art whose products are to be appreciated primarily or solely for their imaginative, aesthetic, or intellectual content.
“the convergence of popular culture and fine art”
2. an activity requiring great skill or accomplishment.
“the fine art of drinking tequila”
What this means is that there is (in the artists point of view) a lesser value to the end results and more value giving to the thoughts and emotion (context) experienced in the process of creating.
You will see this more clearly in contemporary art, where some of the work might be simple, something the viewer could have made.
Like the above piece by David Shrigley for example, you would think that is made very simply and would be easy to reproduce. Yet you won’t be able to reproduce the thoughts and feelings that he experienced while producing this art work.
I like the fact that you can take a tiny piece of conversation, or the way somebody describes something, and use it as a quote. It can seem somehow absurd or profound whereas within the context in which it was said, it was probably just a normal piece of communication. I like the fact that you’re always guessing at the context in which it was played.
(Quoted in mono.kultur, p.16.)
Unlike the installation and sculpture pieces, the contemporary paintings that are being made are a little harder to produce.
Abstraction is ever popular, and is a skill learned by practice and being in touch with your emotions and concepts. It is a part of fine art that seems to convey what fine art is, it is imaginative, has an aesthetic, and emanates intellectual content though a not easily deciphered one. With abstraction it is hard to guess, unless told, what the piece is about.
As it has always been since the Salon’s in France the ones who get to decide what is fine art are the galleries and the ones with money, so the answer to the question what is fine art? is forever changing.
