Fine Art

The term “fine art” often refers to an art form practised mainly for its aesthetic worth and its beauty rather than its functional stance. Fine art painting is seen as a result of the aesthetics movement in Europe which propagated the idea fine “art for art's sake”. According to some writers, the concept of a distinctive genre of fine art painting is a discovery of the early modern age in Europe. Larry shiner in his the invention of art: a cultural history (2003) locates the invention in the 18th century: “there was a traditional system of the arts” in the west before the eighteenth century. (Other traditional cultures still have a similar system.) In that system, an artist or artisan was a skilled maker or practitioner, a work of art was the useful product of skilled work, and the appreciation of the arts was integrally connected with their role in the rest of life. “art”, in other words, meant approximately the same thing as the Greek word “techne”, or in English “skill”, a sense that has survived in phrases like “the art of war”, “the art of love”, and “the art of medicine” similarly, Paul Oskar Kristeller, Pierre Bourdieu and Terry Eagleton(the famous Marxist) have also expressed almost same ideas about the origin of fine art. However, the point of discovery is somewhat placed before- in the Italian renaissance. Anthony blunt notes that the term Arti Di Disegno, a similar concept, emerged in Italy in the mid-16th century. Artists of the fine art painting category aim at creating a work that is purely aesthetically pleasing. The aesthetic purpose of fine art distinguishes it from the “low arts” which are traditionally created and designed for more rational purposes.

Fine art is grounded in design based works and drawing for example, painting, printmaking, and sculpture. It is more often than not contrasted with “applied art” and “crafts” which have been seen as utilitarian activities traditionally. Other non-design-based activities regarded as fine arts, include photography and architecture, although the latter is best understood as an applied art. Fine art, also referred to as “high art” has long been held up as the highest standard of artistic expression. Fine art is mostly perceived to be “a visual art considered to have been created primarily for aesthetic and intellectual purposes and judged for its beauty and meaningfulness, specifically, painting, sculpture, drawing, watercolour, graphics, and architecture.” From this point of view, there are sincere differences based on concepts between the fine arts and the decorative arts or applied arts. As far as the perceiver of the art is concerned, the perception of aesthetic qualities requires a refined judgement of aestheticism usually referred to as having good taste, which differentiated fine art from popular entertainment. The word “fine” denotes to the purity of the discipline according to traditional western European canons. However in the case of architecture, where a practical utility was most favourably accepted, this definition originally excluded the “useful” applied or decorative arts, and the products of what were usually regarded as crafts. In contemporary day to day practice, these differences and restrictions have become essentially meaningless, as the concept or intention of the artist is given primacy, regardless of the ways or modes through which this is expressed. The set of “fine arts” are sometimes also called the “major arts”, with “minor arts'' equating to the decorative arts. With the apparent growth of art over the years, easy fine art painting along with modern fine art painting and contemporary fine art painting have been encouraged.