The notion of "fine art" came to being in 1767. Derived from the French expression "beaux arts," this term referred to advanced visual arts, such as sculpture and drawing. Today, the term is more widely encompassing. Opera, photography, independent filmmaking, theater, and ceramics may all be classified as fine arts. The notion of fine art as different from applied arts came to being only within the past century. Advocates of the fine art movement wanted to distinguish their crafts from the so-called applied arts, like textile design. The British polymath, William Morris, broke from fellow intellectuals by insisting on the ultimate egalitarianism of all forms of art. Yet his socialist pleas were ignored, and fine art broke away from applied art. That said, with the advent of modern artistic forms and new methods of applying arts in a hybrid commercial sense, the distinction between fine and applied arts is once again blurring. There are two phenomenons. One, advertising culture is creeping into every aspect of artistic life. Two, formerly "commercial" arts, like knitting and sewing, are gaining steam as rarefied "fine" arts. Regardless of the semantic distinctions, it's clear that fine art movements are shaping our political and moral culture in ever more subtle ways. Traditional "fine arts," like ballroom dancing, are exploited for commercial profit on reality television. On the flip side, advanced visual art techniques are empowering engineers to unlock the secrets of proteins and to develop new mapping methods. |
