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The term "fine art" is used to define the kind of music, poetry, literature, painting, sculpture, design, and so on that makes us feel that the personal vision of the artist has played a significant part in creating it. This separates, for example, literature from journalism, a symphony from a hit song, a painting masterpiece from a poster and a piece of sculpture from a waxwork figure.
Those distinctions are only valid in the most general terms, of course. This explains the use of the word "great" to describe it, is the nature of the dream of the artist and its realization in the form of art work. For instance, a man who works in an agreed fine-art medium like watercolor, but whose work is lifeless and repetitive, is less a "good" artist than a first-rate advertisement poster designer. A really good poster artist can create something that is as personal and technically advanced as any piece of fine art-and yet perfectly suited to advertising.
A further hint of the meaning of the term "fine art" is provided by the word "purpose." Fine art is, in essence, the kind of art that requires no immediate and easily defined intent. A piece of furniture is a good piece of cabinet construction. It has a clear purpose for it. But, except for a certain minimal, decorative intent, many good paintings are free of any such immediate and obvious feature.
The fine artist uses the opportunity to try out new ideas, to find new ways of communicating his own personal vision. In this sense, the studio of the artist is like the laboratory of a scientist: just as the scientist constantly tries to expand the limits of science by making new discoveries, so the artist constantly finds new or better ways of expressing himself in his work. However, just as technologists, however, industry uses the advances of the scientist, so does the work of the artist fertilize new developments in the area of mass arts*.
Since fine artists are so often experimental in their work, at first a lot of this is hard to understand. That's especially true in 20th-century arts. On the other hand, the works of the Renaissance incorporated elements that were immediately understood together with elements that were both complex and nuanced. This is not the kind of truth that just a few words will explain. You'd have to spend a long time in, say, a museum lined with Renaissance paintings to appreciate this properly. After a while, you would find that you had progressed from a stage where you saw the paintings merely as representations of certain things to a stage where you started to glimpse a new outlook on the world — an outlook that the paintings somehow reflect.
Appreciating a fine artist's work, then, is not about making snap judgments. It is something that takes both patience and time. This is particularly true today, because the artist, like people in many other careers, has become a professional. Five hundred years ago, nearly all the areas of science of his day could be kept in touch by any educated man. For starters, today few businessmen plan to even consider what their own scientist-employees are doing. The same sort of thing happens to the artist. At first sight or hearing, we shouldn't expect to understand his job.
Because it is often difficult to explain in simple terms what is happening in the fine arts, many art critics focus on the notion that if one is to appreciate the work of an artist, one must be born with a different kind of "sympathy" Yet understanding doesn't just come this way. This calls for much caution. This takes a desire to be guided by the artwork itself-to listen closely, learn and re-read, and spend much more time looking at 8visual artworks than we normally do.
Fine art
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| This 13th-century Italian painting portrays the crucified Christ with stylized features according to a traditional pattern. Compare it with the 14th-century painting below by Florentine artist Giotto, who breaks with tradition and brings the same subject to life by infusing it with his own.creative vision. |
The term "fine art" is used to define the kind of music, poetry, literature, painting, sculpture, design, and so on that makes us feel that the personal vision of the artist has played a significant part in creating it. This separates, for example, literature from journalism, a symphony from a hit song, a painting masterpiece from a poster and a piece of sculpture from a waxwork figure.
Those distinctions are only valid in the most general terms, of course. This explains the use of the word "great" to describe it, is the nature of the dream of the artist and its realization in the form of art work. For instance, a man who works in an agreed fine-art medium like watercolor, but whose work is lifeless and repetitive, is less a "good" artist than a first-rate advertisement poster designer. A really good poster artist can create something that is as personal and technically advanced as any piece of fine art-and yet perfectly suited to advertising.
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| Italian sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti showed individuality characteristic of Renaissance artists when he included this self-portrait in his bronze door for the Florence Baptistery. |
A further hint of the meaning of the term "fine art" is provided by the word "purpose." Fine art is, in essence, the kind of art that requires no immediate and easily defined intent. A piece of furniture is a good piece of cabinet construction. It has a clear purpose for it. But, except for a certain minimal, decorative intent, many good paintings are free of any such immediate and obvious feature.
The fine artist uses the opportunity to try out new ideas, to find new ways of communicating his own personal vision. In this sense, the studio of the artist is like the laboratory of a scientist: just as the scientist constantly tries to expand the limits of science by making new discoveries, so the artist constantly finds new or better ways of expressing himself in his work. However, just as technologists, however, industry uses the advances of the scientist, so does the work of the artist fertilize new developments in the area of mass arts*.
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| The Villa Capra, Vicenza, designed by 16th- century Italian architect Andrea Palladio (1518-80). Such villas, with their slender porticoes and broad wings blending harmoniously into the landscape, appealed to the educated patrons of the period because they combined the stately symmetry of Roman architecture with a new lightness and grace. |
Since fine artists are so often experimental in their work, at first a lot of this is hard to understand. That's especially true in 20th-century arts. On the other hand, the works of the Renaissance incorporated elements that were immediately understood together with elements that were both complex and nuanced. This is not the kind of truth that just a few words will explain. You'd have to spend a long time in, say, a museum lined with Renaissance paintings to appreciate this properly. After a while, you would find that you had progressed from a stage where you saw the paintings merely as representations of certain things to a stage where you started to glimpse a new outlook on the world — an outlook that the paintings somehow reflect.
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| Modern artists claim the freedom to express intense personal emotions in a highly individual way-as in portrait of a weeping woman, left, by Spanish-born artist Pablo Picasso*. |
Appreciating a fine artist's work, then, is not about making snap judgments. It is something that takes both patience and time. This is particularly true today, because the artist, like people in many other careers, has become a professional. Five hundred years ago, nearly all the areas of science of his day could be kept in touch by any educated man. For starters, today few businessmen plan to even consider what their own scientist-employees are doing. The same sort of thing happens to the artist. At first sight or hearing, we shouldn't expect to understand his job.
Because it is often difficult to explain in simple terms what is happening in the fine arts, many art critics focus on the notion that if one is to appreciate the work of an artist, one must be born with a different kind of "sympathy" Yet understanding doesn't just come this way. This calls for much caution. This takes a desire to be guided by the artwork itself-to listen closely, learn and re-read, and spend much more time looking at 8visual artworks than we normally do.
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| Style of Picasso's ceramics is equally personal, although it has associations |
with such traditional pottery as the peruvian.
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